This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: + Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. + Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at|http : //books . google . com/ .0'^ ^i\^ >. '^ I ■ / ; L • i* i HISTORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. VOL. V. • 0, 5<.^ / 1 "^ HISTORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. TOL. V. J ieio |ttK MACMILLAN AND CO. PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF THE HISTORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, ITS CAUSES AND ITS RESULTS. BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., HON. D.C.L & LL.D., LATB FELLOW OP TRINITY COLLBCB« OXFORD. Knight Ctmmandtr jtf tkt Gruk Order 9/ the Saxn'our, C9rres^onding Member of the Imftrial Academy ^ Sciences »/ Saint Petersburg^ ^ the Koyal Society ^ Sciences qf Gifttin£rn, mnd ^ the Historiemt Society ^ Massachnsetts. VOLUME V. THE EFFECTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST, Mttkifutf hf ci ik^ awMXofM^ — Plutarch, ThemUtokUSt 99. REVISED AMERICAN EDITION AT THE CLARENDON PRESS FOR MACMILLAN AND CO. Ittto gorh 1876 ' /v- t *^» f »' / . '.X. : HISTORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. TOL. V. Viii PREFACE. But, even should I never carry out this or any other scheme, I venture to hope that, writing as I have done, far from either ^ advantages or the distractions of a capital or an University, writing in my own home among my own books, I have yet been able to do somewhat for the truth of history. I would even believe that what I have written may have gained something by being written in the heart of the reahn of Ine and Alfred, on soil where every step calls up some memory of the great struggle which made Britain England. The Teutonic settlement in this island becomes more of a living thing to one who finds that the boundary of the land which Ceawlin won from the Briton abides, after thirteen hundred years, the boundary of his own parish and his own fields. At all events, in bringing my work to an end, I can say in all honesty that I have laboured for truth, that I have never wilfully kept back any scrap of evidence, whether telling for or against my own conclusions, that I have given every reader of mine the means of coming, if he thinks good, to con- clusions different from my own. The Index to the whole five volumes will appear as soon as a work which involves some labour can be got through. A large part of it is already done. c SOMERLEAZE, WeLLS, March 24M, 1876. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXII. 1067- DomesdAy. PAGE Two unique sources of English history, the Chronicles and Domesday ...... i Fiscal objects of Domesday ; its connexion with the Danegeld of 1083 ...... X — 2 Other objects of the Surrey ; Domesday the beginning of modem statistics ..... 2 — 3 Domesday the picture of the Conquest 3 — 4 Its different stages and forms .... 4 Diflcrences in different districts .... 4 — 5 General fairness of the Surrey .... 6 Legal fictions of Domesday; history of the Conquest as gathered from the Survey .... 6 — 9 Notes of time ; evasive mention of Harold's reign 9 — 10 Legal fictions as to the confiscation ; the anfeceisor ; use of the word vts ...... lo — 12 The Survey a record of the confiscation ; the redemption of lands ....... 13 Nature of William's grants ; first stage of confiscation and rc^nt ....... 13 - 1068 Conhscations after WilHam*s first absence 13 — 14 Forms of the grant ; the King's writ and seal . 14 — 15 Illegal occupations ..... I5 — 16 Cases of commendation . . . . . 1 6 Questions as to the anticessor; witness of the shire and hundred . . . ^ . . it— 18 Cases of outlawry ...... 18—19 Estates left to widows . . 19 Gifts as alms ...... T9 Formal legality of Domesday .... ao^>Sl No legal distinction between French and English to Incidental and personal details .... 2 1-^*4 Notices of Wiggod, Eadnoth, Hereward, ^thelsige, William Malet ....... 34 — 35 Notices of the rdgn of Eadward ; classes of men ; the towns 25 CONTENTS. Geographical notices ; different treatment of different districts Kntries of waste ...... Miscellaneous notices ..... Personal impress of William ; all land his grant Mode of taking the Survey; oaths of the French and English of the district ...... General fairness of the Commissioners ; conservative spirit of the Survey ...... Effects of William's legal formulse ; analogy with Henry the Eighth ....... PAGE 25—26 27 37—28 29 30 30—31 31—32 32—34 CHAPTER XXIII. The Norman Kings in England. 1087— 1 154. Nature and effect of William's Conquest ; comparison between him and other conquerors Comparison between William and Theodoric The Norman Conquests of England and of Sicily Comparison between William and Charles of Anjou Effects of the Conquest on national unity ^ . Its effects on feudal ideas .... Northern and Southern England 1066 — 1x54 The Norman period of English history; naturalization of Norman settlers .... 1087— 1135 Reign of William's sons .... >*35 — 1 1 54 Reign of Stephen ..... 1154 — 1272 The Angevin reigns ; fusion of races Plan of the Narrative .... 35—37 37—40 40—41 41—42 42— 4? 42 42 4.^ 44 44 44 44—45 § I. Rngn of William Rufus. X087 — I 100. Analogies between the Norman and Angevin dynasties . 45 Analogy between William Rufus and Richard the First . 45 Character of the reign of Rufus; relations with France, Wales, and Scotland ; enlargement of the English kingdom 4<>— 47 Personal character of Rufus; his vices and impiety . 47 — 48 His filial duty and sense of honour .... 48 — 49 His soldiers and favourites ..... 49 Sept. 26, 1087 No opposition to his succession ; his coronation 49 — 59^ Easter, 1088 Revolt of the Norman nobles ; loyalty of the English . 50 — ^T The King's appeals and promises to the English . 51 Campaign of 1088 ; the Norman fleet driven back from Pcvcnsey ...... 5' —52 Trial and exile of Bishop William of Durham . . 52 Character of the war ; the last war between Normans and English ...... 52-53 Rufus leader of the English ; his oppression and breach of promises ...... 53 May 24, 1089 Death of Laufranc ..... 53 — 54 CONTENTS. A.D. Foreign wars of Rafus ; his designs on Normandy, Maine, and Aqnitaine . . . « . Anarchy of Normandy under Robert . Henry buys the Cdtentin and Avranchin 1090 Ca5tles in Normandy betrayed to Rufus; faithfulness of Heiias of Saint Saen .... Revolt at Rouen suppressed by Henry ; death of Conan Beginning of warfare between England and France; Philip helps Robert, but is bribed by Rufus Feb. 1091 William in Normandy ; treaty of Caen Settlement of the succession ; growth of the doctrines of legitimacy and hereditary right . February — War of William and Robert against Henry ; Henry obtains March, 1091 Domfront ..... 1093 Fresh disputes stirred up by William of Eu; campaign of 1094 1094 September, The Crusades ; Robert pledges Normandy to Rufus and goes 1096 to the East ..... Englishmen serve under Robert After 1097 Crusade of Eadgar and Robert son of Godwine Ralph of Wader and Odo join the Crusade ; death of Odo Relations between England, Normandy, and France; wars with France; the war deemed in France an English war ...... 1 100 Designs of Rufus on France and Aquitaine ; his negotiations with Duke William .... Analogies with the Hundred Years* War 1097 Beginning of the war with France ; treatment of prisoners Sept. 37, 1098 Truce with France ..... 1088 — 1090 Discontent of Maine under Robert . 1090^1098 Second reign of Hugh ; first reign of Heiias 1095 Pope Urban at Le Mans .... 1096 Quarrel between Heiias and William Rufus . 1097 — ii25 Hildebert Bishop of Le Mans 1098 Captivity of Heiias and taking of Le Mans . 1099 ^^ Mans recovered by Heiias and again taken by Rufus IlOO— ilZO Second reign of Heiias .... Dealings with Scotland, Wales, and Cumberland ; balance of success and defeat ..... July 3, 1088 Revolt of Gruffydd ap Cynan ; death of Robert of Rhuddlan Progress of conquest in South Wales ; occupation of Breck nock, Glamorgan, Pembroke, and Cardigan 1094 — 1095 Revolt in South Wales ; campaign of Rufus ; building of castles ...... 1094 — 1098 War in North Wales ; loss and recovery of Anglesey 1098 Invasion of Magnus of Norway ; Harold son of King Harold death of Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury Relations with Scotland ; English supremacy enforced May, 109 1 Eadgar goes to Scotland; Malcolm invades England August, 1 09 1 William marches against Scotland ; mediation of Eadgar and Robert ; renewal of Malcolm's homage . 1092 History of Carlisle ; Dolfin driven out ; Cumberland annexed to England and Carlisle restored . August 34, Disputes between William and Malcolm ; Malcohn at 1093 Gloucester ..... XI PAGE 54 55 55—56 56—57 57 57—59 59—60 60 60 — 63 61 62 62 63-65 -66 ) —67/ 65 66. 67 67 68 68 68 68—69 69 69 69—70 70 70-71 71—72 72—73 74 74—75 76 76 76-77 78-79 79 XII CONTENTS, Nor. 14, 1093 1093—1094 1094—1097 1097— 1 107 1097— 1099 '095 IO96 1093— 1 109 Lent, 1093 Dec. 4, 1093 Feb. 1094 Mar. ir, 1095 1095 June 10, 1095 1095 — 1096 Octijber 15. 1097 October, 1098 April, 1099 Aug. a, 1100 Malcolm*! bit mvasion of England and death at Alnwkk First reign of Donald in Scotbnd . William grants the Scottish Crown to Duncan ; his reign and death ...... Second reigo of Donald .... Reign of Eadgar ; effects of his accession ; Scodand Angli- cized ; action of the JStheling . Buildings of Rnfos ; Westminster Hall Enforcement of the forest laws ; sererity of ponishment Rofus maintains the royal aothority orer the barons Rerolt* dtfcat, and imprisonment of Robert of Mowbray Conspiracy of William of En ; his defeat in wager of battle and hil punishment .... Growth of feudal ideas nnder Rnfus ; their beating on eccle- siastical controrenies .... Dispute between Ansekn and Rnfus ; difference between their position and that of earlier Kings and Bishops The royal supremacy under the Conqueror; its abuse by Rufbl ...... Influence of Randolf Flam bard ; feudal theory of ecclesiastical benefices ; inferences of Flambard Degradation of the priesthood under Rnfus ; promotion of the King's clerks .... Primacy of Anselm .... Effect of Lanfranc*s death on the character oi Rufns SicknctI of Rufus at Gloucester ; Anselm appointed Arch- bishop ; he accepts the see from the King Disputf about the acknowledgement of Urban Consectmtlon of Anselm ; dispute with Thomas of York Dispute at Hastings .... Council at Rockingham ; nothing decided . Legation of Walter of Albano ; Rufns acknowledges Urban Anselm receives the pallium Interval of peace ; consecration of Irish Bishops Fresh disputes; Gemots of 1096— 1097 ; Anselm takes leavf of the King .... Anselm at Ban ; Urban refuses to accept his resignation Decree of the Lateran Council against lay investiture and homage ..... Beginning of appeals to Rome ; effects of the Conqueror' policy ...... Last year of Rnfiis; his death and burial 95 96—97 97-98 § 2. K^gn of Htnry thi First. 1100— X 135. Characttt of the reign of Henry ; silent drawing together of Englilh and Normans ..... Sentiment of country supplants sentiment of race Henry's ibsences from England; his bestowal of benefices on forkisners ; influence of Robert of Meulan New meimng of the word Englishman ; common interest of all natltes of England ; position of England as a power . / 98—99 99 — 100 CO.\TMNTS. xiu Peace of Henry^i English rei^po ; bis relations with Scotland and Wales ; his character as drawn by the Chronicler Points of likeness between tlie reigns of Ruftis and Henry Personal character of Henry ; his continued literary tastes Seeming contradictions in his character His strict administration of justice . Predominance of Wcssex under the two Williams . Henry's progresses through all parts of the kingdom Fiscal exactions of Henry . ' . His enforcement oi the forest laws . His Biults held to be outweighed by his merits Historical results of his reign ; fusion of Normans and English strengthening of law and oi the royal power Aug. 5, I loo Henry elected King ; he appoints William Giffard to the see of Winchester ..... August 5 His coronation and charter He imprisons Randolf Flambard and recalls Anselm November 1 1 He marrirs Eadgyth of Scotland ; objections to the marriage her name changed to Matilda ; mockery of the Norman courtiers ...... iioi Conspiracy in favour of Robert ; loyalty of the English ; zeal of Anselm ...... Aug. I, iioi Robert lands at Portsmouth ; treaty between him and Henry Last open struggle between Normans and English ; establish- ment of the power of Henry . . , I lo J Revolt and banishment of Robert of Beletme 1 104 Banishment and confiscation of William of Mortain 1x05 — 1 106 Henry's Norman campaigns Sept. 28, 1 106 Battle of Tinchebrai ; Eadgar taken and released . I106— XI 54 Imprisonment of Robert .... Normandy conquered by England . Reign of Henry in England and Normandy ; peace in England, warfare in Normandy .... William son of Robert ; his cause taken up by France Alliance between England and the Empire . Accession of Lewis the Fat ; character of his reign . War of Gison ..... Treaties of Henry with Robert of Flanders Enmity of Flanders and Anjou ; adventures of William Cllto Imprisonment of Robert of Belesme Henry's alliance with Henry the Fifth ; betrothal, marriage and coronation of Adeliza or Matilda Exaction of an aid for the marriage Relations between the two Henries The Normans do homage to the ^thding William Second war with France and Flanders Death of Baldwin of Flanders ; accession of Charles the Good Deaths of Queen Matilda and Robert of Menlan . Battle of Noyon ; growth of the chivalrous spbk . Council of Rheims ; dealings of Lewis with Pope Calixtus Interview between Calixtus and Henry ; peace with France Dying out of the Conqneror*s male line ; the JEtbeling Wil- liam ; homage done to him in England . 1 1 19 — 1 1 20 William's homage to Lewis and marriage . No coronation in the King's lifetime 1 109 • 1111 — 1II3 1103— IXII III3 11X0^1114 III6— 1120 III9 II18 XII9 Oct. 30. 1 119 11x9 — iiao Mar. 19, II 16 lOI loa 103 — 103 103—104 104 — 106 106 106 — 107 107—108 108 — 109 109 109 — no no — III 1.1/ "3 113^1x4 114—115 "5 115 115 — ii6 116 116 116 — 117 117— 118 118 118 118 — 119 119 — 121 lao lai laa xaa — 133 123 "3 134 134 134 134 135—136 ia6 — 137 137 137—138 138 139 XIV CONTENTS. A.D. 1 1 20 The ^theling drowned in the White Ship . 1 1 31 Henry marries AdeHza of Ldwen . 1121 — 1123 New disputes with Anjoa ; rebellion of Walerin of Meulan 1 1 24 — 1 125 Expedition of the Emperor against France ; his death 1 1 24 Defeat of the rebels at Bourgtheroulde ; treatment of the prisoners . • . • , 1 1 25 Peace with France ..... Henry^s plans for the succession of his daughter ; novelty of fenule succession .... ]ti6'-li37 Return of Matilda; her succession sworn to; rivalry of Stephen and Robert .... 1 127 — 1 1 31 Marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda; their disputes ; her sue cession confirmed .... March, 1 133 Birth of Henry the Second Feb. 3, 1 1 34 Imprisonment and death of Duke Robert . Jan. 1127 Lewis takes up the cause of William Clito . 1127 — II 28 Murder of Charles of Flanders ; reign and death of William Clito ; succession of Theodoric . 1 1 29 Pardon of Waleran of Meulan 1097 — 1153 Peace with Scotland; reigns of Eadgar, Alexander, and David ...... ml Affairs of Wales; Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire 1092 1 115 Notmah Bishops of Llandaff, Saint David\ and Bangor 1 106^1 1 16 Relations between Normans and Welsh ; career of Owen son of Cadwgan ..... Iioi — II12 Story of Jorwerth son of Bleddyn . 1 1 1 1 Settlement of Cardiganshire 1114 — 1 121 Henry's Welsh expeditions and their result . Relations of Henry with Ireland and Orkney 1 1 12 Peace of England under Henry; he strengthens Carlisle Struggles with the new Papal theories Henry's Bishops ..... Dispute between Henry and Anselm ; its character . II 00 Return of Anselm ; he refuses to do homage and to con< secrate the King's Bishops ... 1 102 Synod of Westminster; its decrees against the marridl clergy ...... The slave-trade denounced .... 1098 — 1 102 Deposition of Abbots ; Godric of Peterborough Disputes as to the consecration of Bishops . X 103 — 1106 Anselm leaves England and returns 1 107 Compromise between Henry and Paschal; consecration of Bishops ..... II 09 Last days of Anselm ; his dispute with Thomas of York Anselm's buildings ; his canonization 1 109 New bishopricks ; foundation of the see of Ely 1 133 — 1156 Foundation of the see of Carlisle ; ^thelwulf first Bishop 1128 Introduction of the Cistercian Order into England ; Cistercian monasteries ..... 1109 — 1 114 Vacancy of the see of Canterbury . ] 1 14 — 1 1 22 Ralph Archbishop of Canterbury ; disputes with the Popes 11x9 — 1 1 20 Consecration, banishment, and restoration of Thurstan of York ] 1 23 — II 36 William of Corbeil, Archbishop of Canterbury; Councils and Legation of John of Crema PAOB la^— '30 »3o 130— 131 131—132 >3» 132—133 133—135 "35-I36 137 137-138 «37 137-138 138 '38-139 '39 '39— '40 140 140 — 141 '4' 141—142 142 '42—143 143 '43— 14.S 145—146 Z26 147-148 148—149 '49 '.50 '50— '5' '5' '5'— '52 '52 '52—153 153 153— '55 155 155— '56 '56—157 '57—158 CONTENTS. XV 1 107 — 1 1 ao Ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland ; Turgot and Eadmer chosen Bishops of Saint Andrews .... 158 — 159 1 133 — 1 1 35. Henry's last visit to Normandy .... 159 — 160 Dec. I, 1135 His death and burial ..... 160 — 161 i ^ The Reign 0/ Stephen. Nineteen years of anarchy ; fusion of Normans and English goes on ...... 161 — 162 Birth and marriage, of Stephen, Count of Boulogne and Mortain ...... i6a — 163 Dec. 22f 1 1 35 Stephen chosen King; bis coronation and charter; homage of Earl Robert ...... 163—164 1 1 36 Stephen's election confirmed by Pope Innocent; his second charter ...... 164 — 165 Case of Stephen's election ; its analogy with that of Harold . 166 — 168 Portion of David, Theobald, and Robert . . . 166 — 167 Character of Stephen ..... 168 — 169 Wretchedness of the time ; use of mercenaries . . 169 — 170 1 1 39—- f 1 39 Three periods of Stephen's reign ; first of comparative quiet 1 70— 1 71 1124 — 1 1 53 Reign of David in Scotland; suppression of the revolt in Moray . . . 171 1 136— 1 1 39 David's first invasion of England ; cession of Cumberland and Northumberland ; historical bearing of the grants 171 — 176 1137 Renewed disputes with Scotland ; truces . . 175 Aug. 3 a, 1 1 38 David's second invasion of England ; Battle of the Standard ; witness to the fusion of races .... 175 — 178 Mixture of nations in the Scottish army . . . 178 — 179 Cruelties of the Scots; protest of Bruce and Balliol; they defy David ...... 179 — 180 State of Wales ; the Flemish settlements . . . 180 — 181 1 1 36 — X 1 37 Revolt of the Welsh ; Robert son of Harold ; castles built by the Welsh 181— i8a Dec. 1 1 35 Norman feeling for Theobald; Stephen acknowledged in Normandy ; invasion of Geoffrey . . . i8a — 183 1 1 35 — 1 1 37 First war with Geoffrey ; interference of William of Aquitaine ; Eustace does homage to Lewis ; truce with Geofirey . 183 — 184 April— Aug. Death of William of Aquitaine; marriage of Lewis and 1 1 37 Eleanor ; Lewis succeeds to the French crown ; results of the marriage ...... 184 — 185 1 1 38 — 1 1 45 Alliance between Geof&ey and Robert; Geoflfrey's gradual conquest of Normandy ..... 185 — 186 1 1 50 Henry Duke of the Normans . . . . 186 1135 — 1 1 37 Comparative peace in England ; isolated revolts . . 186 extreme application of feudal 186—187 187—188 1136 "37 Siege and recovery of Exeter ; extreme application of feudal theories ...... Alleged conspiracy against the Normans in England May, 1 1 38 Robert of Gloucester defies Stephen; Bristol the centre of warfare ...... 189 Horrors of the anarchy ; independence of the lords of the castles ....... 189 — 191 Roger Bishop of Salisbury ; bis family and castles . , 191^193 June 34 — The Bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln seized by Stephen ; Dec. 4, 1 139 their imprisonment and release ; death of Roger . . 19a — 194 XVI CONTENTS, 113^ — 1161 Theobald Archbishop of Canterbory Aug. 99, 1 1 39 Legation of Henry Bishop of Winchester ; the King arraigned before the Bishops ..... Sept. 30, 1 1 39 Landing of Matilda ; generosity of Stephen ; leaden in the civil war Sept. 8, 1 1 40 Nottingham burned by Robert May — No- Stephen's Court in the Tower ; Bishop Henry's attempts at vember, 1140 mediation ...... 1 140 — 1 141 Stephen at Lincoln ; the castle seized by the Earls ; return of Stephen ..... Feb. a« 1 141 Battle of Lincoln ; speeches before the battle Exploits of Stephen ; his imprisonment ; sack of Liocoia Herrey the Breton besieged at the Devises Feb. 16 — Bishop Henry joins Matilda ; her reception at Winchester and April 7,1141 election 114I Matilda in London; her haughtiness to the citisens; action of Queen Matilda ; the Empress flies to Oxford . 1 141 Bishop Henry changes sides; his synod at Wettmintler Burning of Winchester ; imprisonment of Earl Robert ; he is exchanged for the King; escape of the Empress from Oxford ..... 1 14a — 1 1 44 Local warfare; want of authority on both sides 1144 — 1 1 47 Stephen at Lincoln ; his Christmas feast and repulse of Earl Randolf ..... 1 147— 1 1 48 The Empress leaves England ; death of Earl Robert 1 147 Taking of Lisbon ..... Stephen on bad terms with the clergy ; growth of appeals to Rome .... 1140 — 1 181 Succession of Archbishops <^ York; Saint William, Henry Murdac, Roger ..... 1 1 54 Thomas of London Archdeacon of Canterbury 1 1 53 — 1 195 Hugh of Puiset Bishop of Durham Comparative quiet of the North ; growth of the Cisterciaos 1 1 33 — 1 149 Beginning of Universities ; first lectures at Oxford . 1 149 — 1154 Third period of Stephen's reign; appearance o( Henry of Anjou ; his position and analogy with Charles the Fifth 1 143 — 1 146 Henry's education in England He is knighted by David of Scotland; his rirahy with Eustace ...... 5 a Death of Geoffrey ; marriage of Henry and Eleanor War with Lewis and Eustace in Normandy Attempt to procure the coronation of Eustace; acttoo of Thomas of London . . . Conference between Stephen and Henry 1 1 53— 1 153 Deaths of Eustace, David, and othen . Nov. 6, 1 153- Agreement between Stephen and Henry ; lory's soceeasion Jan. 13, 1154 guaranteed, and homage done to him Oct. 35, 1 1 54 Death of Stephen ..... Dec. 30, 1 154 Coronation of Henry; character and results of his reign ; end of the Norman period ..... 1149 1 151 — II 1153 "53 PAOB »93— 194 194—196 196 196—197 197—198 198 300 200 — 201 »oa— 303 303—204 204 — 206 207 — 208 207—208 20S 208 — 209 209 209 210— 2H 211 211 211 — 213 213—213 213—214 2I4r-2I5\ 215—216 116^217 I 217 '. 217—218 \ 318 219 319 319 — 320 321 231 — 333 CONTENTS. xvu CHAPTER XXIV. The Folitioal Besults of the Norman Conquest. ^ PAGE The English spirit brought out and strengthened by the Conquest ; unbroken continuity of English history ; com- parison with Germany and Denmark . . . 224 — 226 Comparison of the Norman Conquest with other conquests and revolutions ; its special character . . aa6 — 228 § I. EfftcU ofth$ Norman Conquest on the Extemtd Relations 0/ England, ' Early isolation of England ; effects of its insular position . 228 — 229 Effects of the Danish wan and of the Empire of Cnut 229 — 230 England brought nearer to the Romance nations by the Conquest; earlier tendencies in the same direction 230 — 231 Beginning of English warfare on the Continent; effects of the French wars ; alliance with Germany . 231 — 232 New European position of England under Henry the First 232 — 233 Her position under Henry the Second ; analogies with Charles the Fifth and the House of Savoy ; his relations to Scot- land and Ireland ...... 233 — 234 Effects of the reign of Richard . . . . 234 Effects of the loss of Normandy and retention of Aquitaine . 234 — 235 Comparison between England and Sweden . . 236 Ecclesiastical effects of the Conquest ; papal encroachmeats ; question of investitures ..... 236 — 237 Action of the Legates ; appeals to Rome . . 237 — 238 English share in the Crusades ; small share of the Scandi- navian nations in them ..... 238 — 240 Rarity of foreign marriages among the Old-English Kiags ; foreign and English marriages after the Conquest 240—241 General increase of intercourse with the Conrinent; trade with Germany and Gaul ; Norman settlers in London 241 — 242 Interchange of foreign and English scholars and churchmen ; Pope Hadrian the Fourth ; Saint Hugh . . • 242 — 244 § 2. The Effects qfthe Norman Conquest on the Kingly Power. William steps into the place of the elder Kings ; effects of his position in strengthening the kingly power . . 244 — 246 Supposed introduction of the Feudal System by William ; his legislation anti-feudal ; be makes the old institutions serve his purposes ...... 246 — 247 Different meanings of the word *' feudalism ; '* political feudalism checked by. Willi am, but the feudal tenure of land promoted ...... 247 — 249 The King's Thegns become tenants-in-chief . 249 Beginning of knight-service on Church lands . . 249 — 250 Feudal incidents implied in the charter of Henry the First ; reliefs, wardship, and marriage .... 250 — 253 Systematic establishment of the feudal tenures by Randolf Flambard ...... 253 — 254 Logical deductions of Flambard ; dealings with ecclesiastical benefices ...... 254—255 VOL. V. At j xviu CONTENTS. PAOB One side of feudalitm adopted; the King's old and new powers, and old and new revenues . 255 — 257 Relations of the King to the English ; common interest of King and people ; the kingly power strengthened from all quarters ...... 257 — 259 Preservation of old institutions through William's despotism ; unbroken continuance of the ancient assemblies . 259 — a6o Growth of the heceditarj principle ; hindrances to any definite law of succession ..... 260^261 Hereditary succession becomes the rule, but the right of election never given up . . . . 261 Events after the Conquest favourable to parliamenUiy rights ; comparison with France ..... 261 — 262 General results of the Conquest on English kingship ; its twofold character ; analogy with Rome . . . 262 — 263 Position of the King towards the two races ; change under the Angevins ; union of both races against the King . 263 — 264 Freedom preserved through despotism ; effects of William's personal character ..... 264 — 265 § 3. L4gislathn of the Norman Kings, Little direct change in the law ; no substitution of Norman for English law ...... 265 — 266 Modification of English law by Norman influences . . 266^267 Real and legendary legislation of William ; temporary ordi- nances; abolition of capital punishment . . . 267 — 269 The alleged laws of William and Henry ; not forgeries, but private collections ; their witness to the retention of Eng- lish law ... ... 269—270 Legislation of Henry the Second ; beginning of modem English law ; return to the old laws . . . 270 — 271 § 4« Administration vnder the Norman Kings, Administrative and social changes ; outward eflfects of the Conquest most seen when its immediate results had passed away ....... 271—272 Continuity of Engh'sh assemblies ; constitution and working of the ancient assemblies ^ no formal change madp by William ...... 272 — 273 Effect of the practice of summons; origin of Lords and Commons ; the summons the essence of peerage . . 273— 275 The Witan and the Landsittende men continued in the Lords and the knights of the shire ; survival of personal action in the London citizens ..... 273 — 276 Gradual change in the character of the Assemblies ; change in the nomenclature ..... 276—277 The Assembly gradually becomes a Norman body ; gradual change back again ..... 277 — 278 Ori|;in of the ecclesiastical Convocation ; origin of the Three Estates ; twofold position of the Lords Spiritual . . 278 — 279 No formal change in the powers of the Assembly ; constitu- tional language of the Kings .... 280 Action of King and Witan in ecclesiastical matters . . 280^281 CONTENTS. xix Practical change in the working of the Assembly ; its English and Norman aspects ..... aSi Paramount influence of the King ; his authority strengthened by frequent Assemblies ..... 381 — 282 Action of ecclesiastical synods in Stephen's reign . 282 Judicial powers of the Assembly; cases of Odo and William of Eu ; its jurisdiction in ecclesiastical cases . . 28a — 283 Effect of the practice of summons; growth of the inner Council ...... 283 The Curia Regis continues the Thiningtnannagtmdt 384 Effect of the Curia Regis on the centralization q{ justice ; origin of the Law Courts, the Privy Council, and the Cabinet ; the old rights brought back in a new shape 284 — 286 Increased importance of the great officers of state and house- hold ; lessening of the strictly official importance of Earls and Bishops ...... 286 Special innovation with regard to these offices; analogies with the Prankish kingdoms .... 286^387 Working of herediury offices . . . .287—288 Secondary offices ; history of the offices of Chamberlain and Constable ...... 288 The Justiciar; ^arious uses of the title; the office under Flambard, Roger of Salisbury, and Randolf of Glanville . 288—290 The Chancellor ; growth of his office; other uses of the name 290 — 291 The Treasurer ...... 291 The older offices die away and the secondary offices survive 291 The Exchequer ; origin of the name ; not borrowed from Normandy ; action of Bishop Roger and his family 39I — 293 Purchase of offices ..... 293 — 294 The Sheriff; fiscal duties of his office ... 294 Danegeld ; other sources of revenue; witness of the Pipe Rolls ....... 294 — 396 Weakening of the local courts and strengthening of the King's courts . . . ^. . . 296 Judicial action of the old Kings ; pleas* of the Crown ; murder and Englishry ..... 296—398 Royal interference with the popular courts; cases before &e Conquest; the King's officers supplant the ancient presidentf ...... 298 — 299 The old Assemblies kept up ; penalties for non-attendance . 300 Itinerant Justices under Henry the First and Henry the Second . ...... 300 The King becomes the fountain of justice ; gradual return to the old institutions ..... 300 — 302 Trial by Jury ; popular theories as to its origin ; not brought in from Normanidy ' . . . . . 302 — 305 Early approaches to Jury Trial; the Recognitors . . 303 Gradual growth of the system ; greatest change under Henry * the Second ...... 304 Jurors change from witnesses to judges . . . 304 — 305 The Forest Laws ; nature of the forests . . . 305 —306 Legislation of Cnut and the Henries . . . 306 Popular element in the forest courts ; preservation of English law throughout Norman despotism; legisUtion as to * • ferae uatursB" ..... 306—308 b 2 XX CONTENTS. A.D. PAGE § 5. Local and Social Effects of tht Conquest. ** Feudaiization of Europe ; " origin of manors ; theories of lawyers ....... 308 — 309 Growth of the King and the lord .... 309 Grants of immunities ; sac and soc , . . 309 The village conamunity changed into the parish and manor . 309 — 310 Illustration from the Celtic clans ; the chief turns into the landlord ...... 310 Encroachments on the primitive system before and after the Conquest ...... 310 — 311 Nature of commendation . . . . 311 Traces of the older system ; courts-leet and courts-baron ; the old and the new county court . . . 311 — ^312 English origin of the English towns; differences between English and continental towns ; the boroughs follow the analogy of the shire and the hundred . . . 31' English towns at the time of the Conquest; London and Lincoln ....... 313 1 130 — 1247 Charters to London; relation of Middlesex to London . 313 — 314 Growth of the privileges and importance of London ; the commu/M and the Mayor .... 314 — 315 Older and newer towns ; the immemorial customs imitated in the later charters ..... 315 — 317 Effect of the Conquest on the growth of the towns ; growth of corporate privileges . . . . . 317 Contrast between English and continental municipal history ; no special burgher class in England . . . 317 — 318 Social effects of the Conquest ; no broad lines between Nor- man and English ..... 318 — 319 Other classes thrust down by the Conquest, but the slaves rise ...... . 319 Slaves and churls confounded in the class of villains ; growth . of villainage ...... 319-^321 No place for actual slavery in feudal ideas; abolition of slavery in England and elsewhere . . . 321^323 Growth of the chivalrous spirit ; counteracting influences in England ...... 323—324 Forms of conferring knighthood ; different meanings of the word chivalry ...... 334 — 325 Introduction of coat-armour .... 335 — 326 The Court of Chivalry ; the ConsUble and the Marshal . 326 The ordeal gives way to the wager of battle ; introduction of tournaments ...... 326 327 Growth of the doctrine of primogeniture ; it hinders the growth of nobility ..... 327 — 329 § 6. Ecclesiastical Effects qf the Norman Conquest, Increased connexion with Rome through the Conquest ; papal encroachments; long struggle and final emancipation of England ...... 339—331 Internal ecclesiastical effects of the Conquest ; exemption of Churchmen from temporal jurisdiction ; comparison with the Eastern Church and Empire .... 331 — 332 CONTENTS. XXI Introdnction of foreign prelates ; secularization of the Bishops ; feudalization of ecclesiastical relations . Changed relations of the Bishops to their own churches ; growing independence of the Chapters ; cases of monks in cathedral churches ..... Effects of the Conquest in favour of the regulars ; growth of new orders ...... History of tithe ; of advowsons ; appropriation of tithe to chapters and monasteries .... General results of the Conquest ; its indirect benefits 333—33,^ 333—335 335 335—337 337—338 CHAPTER XXV. The Eflbots of the Norman Conquest on Language and literature. No purpose on William's part to root out the English tongue ; origin of the error ..... 339 — 340 Gradual change in language caused by the Conquest ; strength- ening of tendencies already at work ; loss of inflexions ; infusion of Romance words .... 340 — 341 Effect of confusion in nomenclature ; origin and history of the English language ..... 341 — 342 Different dialects of English .... 342 Changes in language before and after the Conquest . 343 — 344 § 1. Effects of the Conquest on the English language. Influx of foreign words in all languages; displacement of native words ...... 344 — 345 Earliest Latin infusion in English .... 345 — 346 British infusion ...... 346 Second Latin infusion, chiefly ecclesiastical . . 346 — 347 Danish influence ...... 347— 34^ French infusion under Eadward . . . 34 H Effects of the Conquest ; distinct French infusion ; beginning of displacement of English words . . . • 348 — 349 Loss of inflexions ...... 349 Check put on decay by the use of writing ; history of Greek and Latin ...... 349 — 350 Elder standard of English destroyed by the Conquest ; com- parison of English and Welsh .... 350 Corruption of the language itself; comparison with other Teutonic tongues . . . . . 351 Use of French and English side by side ; use of Latin ; use of English under the Angevins .... 352 — 353 Rare notices of language ; slow introduction of French as an ofEcial language ; its use a sign of the fusion of races 353 — 355 1258 English proclamation of Henry the Third ; iU importance in the history of English ..... 355—356 Fashionable use of French ..... 356—360 First signs of speculation on the subject of languages . 357 — 358 J 363 Final triumph of English ; survivals of the use of French . 359 — 360 Influence of French on English ; infusion of Romance words 360 xxu CONTENTS. Corniptton of grammatical fonns ; comparbons with French and High-Dutch ..... Different dialects of English ; standard English the speedi of Eastern Mercia ...... Infusion of foreign words a sign of the fnsioo of races ; the process in the thirteenth and foarteenth centuries Duplacement of natire words ; loss of the power of coining words ....... Eril results of the Conquest on language ; power of English in the elerenth century ..... Analogies between English and Frendi ; Teutonic infusioo in French answers to the Romance infbsion in English Teutonic words brought back in a French shape Analogies between the Frankish Conquest of Gaul and the Norman Conquest of England .... Latin the .tongue oi Gaul ; smallness of the Celtic element in French ...... Points of unlikeness between the two Conquests One period of Teutonic infusion in French ; sereral periods of Romance infusion in English .... Teutonic words in Latin ..... Different relations between Latin and French and between Old'English and modem English 361 — 36a 362—364 365 365-366 366—367 367-370 368 368 368-369 369—372 369—370 370 371—372 § 2. Effecti of the Conquest on Personal and Local Nomenclature, Old-English personal nomenclature ; its Teutonic and insular character ; comparison with other countries English names borne by the sons of Danes and of Eadward*] Normans ..... Introduction of Norman and saintly names ; Norman names borne by the sons of English fathers Disuse of English names ; their partial surnval Introduction of hereditary surnames ; distinction between surnames and gentile names ; origin of surnames . Personal surnames in England ; definition of hereditary sur- names ...... Introduction of surnames in Normandy ; history of local surnames ..... Patronymic and metronymic surnames Surnames formed from nicknames and offices Pretended hereditary surnames before the Conquest Effects of the Conquest on local nomenclature ; British and Danish names in England Few English names displaced, but French names given to new places ..... Norman surnames of places Local nomenclature of South Wales, Irehmd, and Cumberbind 37«— 374 374—375 375 376 377—378 377—378 378—379 379—380 380—381 381-382 382 382—383 383-384 § 3> Effects of the Norman Conquest on English Literature. Lack of English literature in the eleventh century; little encouragement of learning under Eadward . . 384—385 CONTENTS, XXlll A.D. 1340? Influx of learned men under William Latin historians ; miscellaneous Latin writings Growth of the Romance tongues; character of the Old French ...... French riming chroniclers ; witness of Gaimar to the fusion French prose ; miscellaneous French writings The song of Roland and the Carolingian legends The Arthurian legends; their worthlessness ; contrast with Homer ...... English prose ; the Ayenbite of Inwyt English heroic songs ; their language unlike that of prose contrast between them and the French riming chronicles Introduction of rime ; French influence Denationalization of English literature ; contrast of Orderic and Lajamon ..... Unnational character and influence of La)amon^s poem English metrical chronicles ; Robert of Gloucester . Satiric, panegyric, and devotional writings . English influence on French Position of Chaucer .... Evil effects of the Conquest on national speech and con- sciousness ..... PAGB 385 385-387 387-388 388 389 389 389—390 390— 39« 39«— 393 393—394 394 395 395—396 396 397 397—398 398—399 CHAPTER XXVI. • The Bffeots of the NormAii Conquest on Art. Art in the eleventh century means architecture ; position of the subordinate arts ..... 400— >40l Architectural importance of the eleventh centuj7 ; the style mainly to be studied in churches . . 401 Historical position of the Romanesque style ; its co-ordinate rank with Grecian and Gothic . . . . 4O1 — j^oi Primitive Romanesque of Western Europe ; growth of local styles ....... 402 — 403 1050—1 100 Primitive style keeps on in Germany, but in England gives way to Norman ...... 403 Growth of Romanesque ; a developement of Roman . 403 — ^404 Beginning of consistent architecture at Spilato ; buildings of Rome, Ravenna, Lucca, and Pisa . . . 404—405 Basilican and domical types of churches ; fusion of the two . 405 — 406 Vulgar errors about English architecture before the Conquest 406 — 407 Introduction of stone building .... 407 — 408 Primitive buildings in England .... 407 — 409 Roman character of the style ; ground-plan and interiors of the churches ...... 409 — 410 The Primitive towers ; their Italian origin ; the Irish round towers ....... 410—412 History of Romanesque in Italy and Germany . 412 History of Romanesque in Gaul . . . 413 Aquitanian and Angevin styles .... 413 — 41 4 Origin of Norman Romanesque ; examples in Normandy . 414— 41 5 Distinction between Primitive and Norman Romanesque . 415 — 416 XXIV CONTENTS. A.D. PAGE Connexion between Norman and Lombard architecture . 417 — ^418 Nonnan style brought into England by Eadward ; increase * in the size of churches ; the English churches destroyed because too small ..... 418 — 419 Norman architecture in England affected by the Primitive style ....... 419 — ^420 1093 — 1 1 28 Durham the perfection of Northern Romanesque . . 420—422 1055 — 1065 Introduction of the Norman style in small buildings; Kirk- dale 422—423 The Primitive style retained alongside of the Norman ; Lin- coln ; Jarrow ; Oxford ..... 423 — 425 Influence on the architecture of Scotland ; Dunfermline and Saint Andrews . . . . . . 425 — 426 Architectural improvements of Roger of Salisbury ; style of Henry the Second's reign .... 426 — 427 Introduction of the pointed arch ; the form brought from the East, but developes an appropriate system of detail . 427 — ^428 Stages of the Transition from Romanesque to Gothic ; im* perfect Gothic of Italy . . . . • 428 1 1 86 — 1200 Growth of Gothic detail ; work of Saint Hugh at Lincoln . 428 Character of the Transition .... 428 — 429 No special ecclesiastical style ; rarity of Romanesque civil buildings ; halls ...... 429 — 430 Effect of the Conquest on domestic architecture ; stone houses . * . . 430 — 432 Effect of the Conquest on military architecture ; the Norman castles ....... 432 Castles on English moimds . . • . 433 Change in warfare ; sieges instead of pitched battles . 433 — 434 Importance of the Conquest as a turning-point . . 434 — 43^ CHAPTER XXVII. The Angevin Beigns. 1 1 54 — 1307 Sketch of the Angevin period . . . . Position of England within the British islands ; two English kingdoms, each with Celtic dependencies Tendencies to fusion ; workihg of the French and Scottish wars ....... Legislation of the Angevin Kings; no distinction between English and Normans ; language of Giraldus and other scholars ....... Working of the Norman and Angevin periods ; character of the thirteenth century ; its effect on England Henry the Second and Edward the First Analogies between Henry the First and Henry the Second . Three periods of Henry the Second*s reign ; his character as a lawgiver ...... 1154 — 1 1 64 First period ; the restoration of order 1154 — 1 162 Chancellorship of Thomas of London 1 1 6a His appointment as Archbishop; Henry's mistake in the appointment ; artificial position of Thomas 43^—437 437—438 438—439 439-440 440 440 440— 441 441 441 441—443 CONTENTS. Objects of Henry and Thomas ; comparison of their quarrel with that of Henry the First and Anselm . 443 — 444 1 1 70 Second quarrel between Henry and Thomas; coronation of young Henry ./.... 445 Death of Thomas ; lax use of the word " martyr" . . 445 Position of Thomas with regard to the fusion of races ; his English spirit ...... 445—447 Good side of the ecclesiastical exemptions . . . 446 1170 — 1 189 Third period of Henry's reign ; character of Queen Eleanor 447 1 1 73 — 1175 Rebellions and wars of Henry's later days; revolt of the Earls ; capture and homage oi William of Scotland . 447 — 449 1169 — 1171 Conquest of Ireland ..... 449 1189 Continental wars ; loss of Le Mans ; death of Henry . 449 Legislation of Henry ; the action of the Witan goes on ; he legislates for an united nation .... 449 — ^450 1 1 54 — II57 Esublishment of his power .... 450 1 159 War of Toulouse and scutage . . 451 Developement of the Jury . . . . . 451 Thonus withstands the Danegeld . . . 451 1 164 The Constitutions of Clarendon renew the laws of Henry the First; Henry's schemes premature . . . 451 — 453 Ordination of villains . . . . . 453 1166^1176 Henry's later legislation; the Assize of Clarendon; the Inquest of Sheriffs ; the Assize of Northampton . . 453 — 455 Advance of the system of recognitions ; destruction of castles ; penalties of heresy . . . . 454""455 1 18 1 The Assize of Arms ; the use of mercenaries ; reorganization oirht Fyrd ...... 455 1184 The Assize of the Forest ..... 45<5 n88 The Saladin Tithe . ..... 45^ England kept distinct from Henry's foreign dominions . 457 General character of Henry's reign ; his European position ; marriages of his daughters ; his Italian policy . . 457 — ^459 Sept. 3, 1 1 89 Accession of Richard the First; un-English character of his reign ; constitutional advance under his ministers . 459 — 460 Position of Arthur of Britanny .... 460 1190 — 1192 Richard's Crusade . ..... 460 Release of William of Scotland from his special obligations . 460 — ^461 1 1 89 — 1 197 Chancellorship of William Longchamp . . . 461 Overthrow of the Chancellor ; action of Earl John . . 461 1 190— 1193 Captivity of Richard; his homage to the Emperor and ransom ...... 462 Mar. 30, 1 194 Council at Nottingham ..... 462 April 17 Richard's coronation at Winchester . . 462 May 12 He leaves England for ever .... 462 — 463 1193 — 1198 Jnstidarship of Archbishop Hubert . . 463 1196 Sedition of William Fitz-Osbert .... 4^3 Developement of the representative principle; Richard's extortions ; his charters to boroughs . . . 463 — 464 1 198 Geoffrey Fitz-Peter Justiciar ; origin of Justices of the Peace and Knights of the Shire .... 464 — 465 Dec. 7, 1 197 Council at Oxford ; Saint Hugh withstands the King's de- mand for money ..... 465 1 198 Hubert removed from the justiciarship . . . 465 April 8, 1 199 Death of Richard ; he bequeaths the Crown to John . 466 XXVI CONTENTS. A.D. PJUS Arthcr acknowledged in Anjou . . . • ^ 46^ May 23,1199 Speech of Archbishop Hubert; lawfulness of John's ac- cession ....... 466—467 Character of John ; advantage to England of his crimet . 467 — 468 1202 — 1204 Overthrow and fate of Arthur; conquest and forfeiture of Normandy ...... 469 — 470 The separation of Normandy the formal undoing of the Conquest ...... 470 Fusion of races strengthened by John*s love of foreigoen . 470— 47 1 1 205 — 1 212 Deaths of Archbishop Hubert and Geoffrey Fitz-Peter . 471 1200 John's divorce and second marriage . . . 471 1 21 3 — 1 214 Administration of Peter des Roches . . . 471 1207 — 121 3 The dispute with Innocent; John's homage; English resist- ance to Rome ...... 471 — ^472 1 2 14 John's successes on the continent; battle of Bouvines . 472 1207 — 1228 Primacy of Stephen Langton ; effiects of his appointment by Innocent ...... 473 1 2 13 The English refuse to fight for John . . . 473 1 213 Return of the Archbishop; John's promises; Council at Saint Paul's ...... 473—474 1214 The Barons at Saint Eadmundsbury ; action of the Northern men and the Londoners .... 474 — 475 1 215 The Great Charter; the first act o\ the restored English nation ....... 475 — ^476 Clauses of the Charter; protection given to all classes; advance of parliamentary representation; power of the purse ; right of resistance asserted . . . 476—479 Omission of the constitutional clauses in the confirmation . 478 Advance of municipal rights; position of the Mayor of London ...... 478 Rebellion of John ; the Charter annulled, and the barons excommunicated by Innocent .... 479 Election of Lewis ; his claims ; English feeling turns against him ; death of John ..... 479—481 Reign of Henry the Third . . . . 481 Battle of Lincoln . . . . . 481 Dominion of the Legates ..... 481 — ^482 Confirmation of the Charter . . . . 482 William Earl Marshal Guardian . . . . 482 Career of Hubert of Burgh . . . 482 Revolt and death of Richard Earl Marshal . . 482 Henry's personal reign begins . . . . 48a His marriage ; evil influence of his wife and mother . 483 Resistance to the foreigners under Earl Richard of Cornwall 483 Parliaments of Henry the Third; demands for the parlia- mentary appointments of the great officers ; advance of representation ...... 483—484 Letters from England to the Popes . . 484 Union of races and classes ; patriotism of the clergy . 484 — 485 Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury . . . 485 Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln . . . 485 Walter of Cantelupe, Bishop of Winchester . . 485 Falling away of Earl Richard .... 485—486 Simon of Montfort ; his marriage, career, and work . 486 — 487 1258 The Provisions of Oxford . .... 486 1216 1216— 1272 1217 1215 — 1221 1216 — 1223 1216 — 1219 1 219— 1243 1234 1227 1236 1245— 1247 1234 — 1240 "35— "53 1237— 1266 CONTENTS, xxvu 1364 — 1265 The Barons' War; battles of Lewes and Eresham; popular canonizatioa of Simon ..... Edward the successor of Simon Reign of Edward the First ; his character, legislation, and conquests ...... Edward the first English King of the new line 487 487 488—489 488—489 / APPENDIX. Note A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. K. L. M. N. O. P. R. S. T. U. W. X. Y. Z. AA. BB. CC. DD. EE. FF. GG. HH. II. KK. LL. MM. NN. 00. Domesday ..... Notes of Time in Domesday Unjust Seizures of Land .... The Condition of Worcestershire under William The use of the words " Franci ^ and '* Angli " in Domesday The " Antecessores " of Domesday Leases and Sales in Domesday The use of the word vis in Domesday The King's Writ and Seal Notices of Outlawry in Domesday . Notices of Wives and Daughters in Domesday Grants of Alms in Domesday Castles and Destruction in Towns . The Condition of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey The King's Reeves .... Jews in England ..... Robert the son of Godwine . . . The Conquest of Glamorgan The Appropriation of Ecclesiastical Revenues by William Rufus ...... The Death of William Rufus The Fusion of Normans and English The Character of Henry the First . Henry the First's Appeal to the English The Imprisonment of Duke Robert The Treaties between Henry the First and Robert of Flanders ..... Robert Earl of Gloucester The Flemish Settlements in South Wales . The Claim of Stephen to the Crown The alleged Danish Invasion in Stephen's time The Treaty between Stephen and Henry . English Trade with Germany Military Tenures ..... Reliefs ...... The Alleged Laws of William and Henry the First Ordeal and Wager of Battle Assemblies under the Norman Kings The King's Court .... The Great Officers of State and Household 490 494 499 507 5" 514 520 516 533 535 537 539 541 54a 547 547 548 549 550 55» 561 567 568 569 571 57a 575 577 578 578 580 581 584 586 588 589 cviii CONTENTS. PAGE NoTK PP. The Exchequer ...... 589 Qii. Danegeld .... 59* RR. Trial by Jury 592 SS. Notices of Commendation in Domesday 592 TT. The Towns 594 UU. Clafkses in Domesday 594 WW. The Use of English 595 XX. Norman and English Names 598 YY. The Churches of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth 601 AZ. William with the Long Beard 602 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. p. 14, 1. 13, for " during William's first visit " read " after William's first return." p. 16, note 3. This extract is not quite correct. The " Anglicus " who held the land at the time of the Survey was a different person from the " liber homo" who com- mended himself to Geoffrey. See p. 593. p. 35, note, for "Ralph of Diss" it is safer to keep the Latin form " de Diceto." I am not clear what place is meant. p. 6a, note %. See p. 548. p. 78. The Introduction to the Pipe-Rolls of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham, published by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Newcastle, 1847), contains a good sketch of the history of Cumberiand, avoiding the usual errors. p. 7S, note 4, deli *' who is not copied by Simeon." I was misled by the omission of the passage in Mr. Hinde's edition. p. 80, dele note I for the same reason. p. 81, 1. 30, for "by either" read "either by." p. 82, 1. 16. Compare the complaints of Lactantius, or whoever was the writer of the treatise De Mortibus Persecutorum, against the architectural works of Diocletian, c. 7. p. 91, note 3, for "eccleiia" read "ecclesiac." p. 9a, 1. 13, for " position" read " possession.*' p. 1 20, note 3, for " leger" read " I^ger." p. 138, 1. 23, for " a kingly o^ce" read " the kingly office." p. 162, note. Yet the *' Norraannorum rabiosae proditiones" may betaken of doings of Normans in Normandy. It was there that opposition to Stephen began. See p. 1 83. p. 163, 1. 22. On the share of London in the election of Stephen, see Mr. J. R. Green, Old London, 26 1. p. 167, 1. I. For a third side of Earl Robert's character, see Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium. p. 177, note, for " arms" read "arm." p. 187, note 6. See Note W., p. 553. p. 192, note 7, for " locum" read ** boum." p. 195, note I, for "brozt" read " brojt," and for "zut" read "jut." p, 196, note, for ** progeniara" read " progeniem." p. 210, note 5, for "infranduit" read "infrenduit" p. 212, note 4, for " desertationem ** read ** decertationem." p. 330, 1. 5 from bottom, for " descent from" read " kindred with." p. 236, 1. 6, for " same kind" read " same in kind." p. 354, 1. 2 from bottom. The phrase of the Chronicler quoted in p. 89, note i, has an evident reference to the relief as practised in the days of Rufus. The ancient heriot in no way made the lord the heir of his man ; the relief in some sort did. p. 276, note 2. We get the phrase "de consilio sapientum" as late as 1291, when Edward the First is asserting his rights over Scotland. Annales Regni Scotiae, Rishanger, 240. XXX ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. p. 283, 1. 25. This was written and printed before the last strange device of paid peers was heard of. p. 285, 1. ult., for *• help determine" read "help to determine." p. 286, note 2, for ** quamlibet" read " quemlibet." p. 287, note 3, for "Rechsinstitnte" read " Rechtsinstitate." p. 306, note I, for " 284" read "ii. 84." P* 309, 1. 3. In some parts of England the word lordship is commonly used for " manor/' and, as an English word, I have often used it by preference ; bat it is nther ' an English translation of " manor" than *' manor" a French translation of it. p. 315. L 5. See J. R. Green, Old London, 278. p. 333. 1. 6, for ** is a difficulty" read ** are difficulties." p. 325, 1. 17, for "relationship" read "relation." P* 337f !• 15* '^^i^ process must also have been tnade easier throagh the practice of laymen farming tithes, which appears as early as Domesday, p. 304. At Ottinsham in Yorkshire, " ibi ecclesia et presbyter est ; quidam miles locat earn et reddit x. soTidot.'* p. 348, 1. 7 from bottom. I should not have said " William Rnfus huUd* the Tower.** See vol. iii. p. 535, iv. pp. 12, 247, and p. 429 of this volume. What Roftis bnilt was a wall round the Tower, " )x>ne weall |>e hi worhton unbutan jxme TQr.** P- 353* note 3, for " Welshmen" read " Welshman." p. 356, 1. 3, for " Leicester" read " Leirchestre.*' p. 372, note 2. The expression here is singular. It sounds as if legal fictioos went to far that land held by Harold was held to be " in dominio regis [Willelmi]." p. 389, 1. 10 from bottom, for " goodly" read " godly." p. 415, 1. 9 from bottom, for " ornaments" read "ornament." p. 426, 1. 1 7. I have referred to Sitten in a earlier page ; but I ought to have more distinctly mentioned the very Primitive — in all but the square shape of the tower, the very Irish — character, of the little church of All Saints on the slope of Valeria. p. 448, note 4. Gospatric the son of Orm often appears in the Cumberland Pipe- Rolls. See below, p. 600. p. 451, note I, for " superstitione " read " superstitio." p. 456, 1. 2 from bottom, for " liabilities" read " liability." p. 458, note 2, for " fera" read " fere.'* p. 467, 1. 17 from bottom, for " gave" read " give." p. 488, note I. He is also " Edwardus Tertius" in several placet of the Annales Anglix et Scotiae in the Rishanger volume, 371 et seqq. p. 490, I. 6 from bottom. In Giraldus de Instructione Prindpum, 167, it is " Rotulus WintonisB." p. 494, 1. I. Cf. the case of challenging the jurors at p. 586. p. 494, 1. 20, for " to " read " with." p. 499, 1> 3. On Eamwine, see p. 15. p. 507, 1. 9, for " Capras" read " Capra." p. 512, 1. 17 from bottom, for "to" read "from." p. 515, 1. 19 from bottom, read "Eo quod Bondi tenuerit. Willelmi vero antecessor tenuit, Radulfus de Limesi." p. 522, 1. 26, diU**E,'* p. 540, 1. 15. There is no distinct mention of Berkeley Cattle itself in Domesday, though there is of a smaller castle within the vast lordship of Berkeley. " In Nesse [Sharpness?] sunt v. hidse pertinentes ad Berchelai, quas W. comes misit extra ad faciendum unum castillulum, Habet Rogenis [de Berchelai]." p. 571. Note CC. There is nothing to alter in this account of the Flemings in Pem- brokeshire ; but there is some reason to think that they were not absolutely the first Teutonic settlers in the district. Though Tenby is not (see p. 384) a Danish 6y, there are some Scandinavian names in the district, not merely the names of the islands, but on the mainUnd. This was pointed out by the Bishop of Saint David's at the Caermarthen meeting of the Cambrian Archseological Association in 1 875. And he added that two at least, Hasgard and Freystrop, would hardly hil to have been given by heathen settlers. « ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. xxxi If any such Scandinavian settlements had lasted down to the time of Henry the First, the ground would have been thereby in a manner prepared for his more systematic Teutonic colonization. P- 575f !• 1 3, from bottom. The position of tUi writer reminds one of that of Thietmar of Merseburg at an earlier time. See vol. I pp. 235,446. p. 593, Note SS. I ought here to have mentioned some of the cases in which a man does not commend himself, but is commended by somebody else (cf. the case of the kingdom in vol. iii. p. 8). See p. 543 for the man who was commended to an English reeve to be fed and clothed. Here the advantage was on the side of the person com- mended; in another case (Domesday, 163), where the commendation is to a Norman reeve, the advantage seems to be the other way. Of two brothers at Cromhall in Gloucestershire who " cum terra sua se poterant vertere quo volebant," it is said, ** Hos W. comes [William Fitz-Osbem] coramendavit praeposito de Berchelai, ut eorum haberet servitium, sicut dicit Rogerus [de Berchelai]." p. 595, Note WW. I omitted to say anything about the English writs spoken of in p. 354. It should be noticed that English is often used, even when the persons addressed are Normans. There is one belonging to the Chapter of Wells addressed by the Con- queror to William of Curcelles (Roger of Curcelles was a great land-owner in Somerset ; see Domesday, p. 93). The Christ Church writs in the Monasticon, i. ill, referred to by Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 443), are one of the Conqueror, one of Henry the First, and one of Henry the Second. The first two are on behalf of Lanfranc and Anselm severally. That of Henry the Second is accompanied by a Latin form which alone has the names of the witnesses, among whom are Thomas the Chancellor and Henry of Essex, which fixes it to the first years of his reign. In the Latin Henry gives himself his full titles, as Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and Count of Anjou, but in the English he is simply ** )mrh Godes gefu ^nglelandes king." Here too the three times of lawful rule are clearly marked out. The Archbishop and his monks are to have all rights which they had ** en Edwardes kinges daege, and on Willelmes kinges mines fur]mr ealdefader, and on Henrices kinges mines ealdefader." p. 600, 1. 13. Or it might be parallel to William Leuric in p. 599. I CHAPTER XXII. DOMESDAY.' ^ Among the sources from which we draw our "knowledge of the times which form the subject of the present History, there are two which stand alone. England, alone among Western nations, alone among nations of either Romance or Teutonic speech, can point to an im- broken history of seven hundred years of the national being recorded . in the living speech of the land. We alone can read, in our own l tongue in which we were born, the tale both of our lasting conquests j and of our momentary overthrow. We can read how we ourselves AaJlJ^ / setded among strangers whom we drove out from the land in which we I now dwell, and how conquerors came to settle among us who were j but our 4isguised kinsmen. The English Chronicle stands alone among the sources of history, holding a place among the written remains of Teutonic prose second only to the Bible of Ulfilas. And, side by side with this precious relic of our own tongue and nation, we may place the hardly less precious fruit of the wisdom of our Con- queror. If the English Chronicle stands alone, Domesday Book stands alone also. No other land can show such a picture of a nation at one of the great turning-points of its history. For the great Survey is in truth a picture of the nation, and nothing less. It is a picture of the nation all the more because there certainly was no intention of making it one. There is no need to depreciate tlie Survey and its author by speaking of it as a mere vulgar instrument of extortion.* * The anthority for this Chapter is the Sonrcy itself, on which sec mote in Ap- pendix A. * Thterrj (ii. 91) begins his account of Domesday by d^cribing, seemingly from the fiUse Ingulf, William and his Normans as mutually charging one another with ararice and injustice. He then goes on ; "Afin d'asseoir sur une base fixe ses de- mandes de contributions ou de services d'argent, pour parler le language du si^cle, Gttifiaume fit faire une grande enqu^te ter- ritoriale, et dresser un registre univenel de tootes les mutations de propri^t^ oper^ en Angletene par la conqu^t«.*' And VOL, V. ] presently, '*Ce travail, dans lequel des his* toriens modemes ont cm voir la marque du g^nie administratif, fiit le simple re* sultat de la position speciale du roi nor- mand comme chef d'une arm^ conqu^ rante, et de la necessity d'^tablir un ordre qnelconque dans le chaos de la conqulte." He goes on to compare the Domesday of Greece made by the Latin conquerors in the thirteenth century, most likely in imi- tation of William. I do not know that there is in all this any direct misstatement of facts, but the whole is coloured m Thierry's usual fashion. 2 DOMESDA K No doubt fiscal motives entered largely into the counsels of William when he sought to know how this land was set and by what men.' I have already said that there is an evident connexion between the making of the Survey and the great Danegeld which had been laid on two years before, when Cnut of Denmark was threatening invasion.' One great object throughout the Survey clearly is to see that the tax was paid, and also that it was fairly paid. The reports which are made show at once a wish to hinder the King from being defrauded of his right, and a wish to hinder the subject from being made to pay more than his fair proportion of the general tax. The payment or non-payment of the geld is a matter which appears in every page of the Survey ; and it is perhaps not too much to say that the formal immediate cause of taking the Sur\ey was to secure its full and fair assessment But, as the Survey has other uses, so also it had other purposes. Domesday might be primarily a rate-book; but it was, )even in its own age, meant to be something more thart a mere rate-book. For William's objects it was needful to know, not only the taxable wealth of the country, but its military strength. After so many confiscations and grants and transfers of land of all kinds, it was needful to know by whom the land was at last really held and by what right each actual owner held it It must not be forgotten that the doctrine which the dreams of lawyers have tried to raise into an eternal truth, the doctrine that all land is held by a grant of the Crown, was in William's days a doctrine at once true and practical Every man, French or English, in William's kingdom, save only the official holders of ecclesiastical property, held his land as a direct personal gift of the reigning King.' William might well think it part of his kingly duty to find out whether his will had really been carried out in all cases, whether every man, French or English, was in actual posses- sion of the estates which the King had designed for him. Such an inquiry might in many cases be of real political importance. William wished to reward his followers; but he did not wish so to reward them as to make them dangerous to his own power. It became him to know exactly what the possessions were which he had granted to Earl Hugh or Earl Roger. Nor less did it become him to know whether smaller grantees of eitlier nation had ever been kept out of their lawful holdings by the wrong-doing of men in power or of the agents of men in power. All these things it was both the duty and the interest of William to search out And in such a mind as his we may surely suppose the existence of views still more enlarged. Domes- day is the first known statistical document of modem Europe ; it was the first survey of the kind which had been made since the days of the * See the extract from the Chronicles in p. 403. I shall have to speak of this Dane- vol. iv. p. 469. geld again. See also Appendix A. ^ See vol. iv. pp. 465, 469, and voL ii. ' See vol. iv. p. 15, and Appendix A. OBJECTS OF THE SURVEY. 3 elder Roman Empire. Modem science may perhaps smile at its rudeness and imperfection. In a wider view both of history and of human nature, we shall rather be inclined to admire its success, and to wonder that so much information of so many kinds could have been got together in a first attempt. And surely we may believe that, in commanding such a survey of his kingdom to be drawn up, William had at least some glimmerings of the many purposes for which such surveys have been found useful. We need not credit William, we need not credit any modem Government, with carrying on such in- quiries out of a zeal either purely benevolent or purely scientific. But we may believe that William could see in some measure, what experi- ence enables a modem Government to see more clearly, that the general business of the country, whether legislative, administrative, or fiscal, can be better carried on if the mlers have a thorough knowledge of the land and the people over whom they are called to rule. In Wil- liam's case his kingdom really was a vast estate, parcelled out among holders who were strictly his own grantees and tenants. Of such an estate it was as obvious a piece of prudence to draw up a gigantic terrier as it was to draw up the smaller terrier of a smaller estate. One great object doubtless was to know the extent and value of the estate. But William, we may be sure, was clear-sighted enough to remember that, if he was a landlord, he was not a mere landlord but a King. As an historical monument, the value of the Domesday Survey cannot be overrated. I have already given, in earlier chapters of this History, many incidental instances of the light which it throws upon every branch of inquiry which can present itself to a student of these times. It is a map and a picture of England at a moment of which a map and a picture is unusually precious. As I said at the beginning, | the Norman Conquest is the great ^nming-pnint nf F.ngliah history. I Domesday gives "^s the map and picture of EnglainJlf IHe exacl| moment of that tuming-point. It was drawn up immediately after a great revolution, and it was specially designed to show the exact amount of change which that revolution had wrought. It sets things before us as they stood in the days of King William ; but it also takes care to set them before us as they had stood in the days of King Eadward. And, in setting things before us as they stood in the days of King William, it sets them before us as they stood at the moment when the causes of change had already been introduced, but when those causes had not as yet had any great time to work. The Eng- land which is mapped and pictured in Domesday is an England which already has a foreign King, and in which all the highest offices and greatest estates have already passed into the hands of foreigners. But it is an England in which the laws, the offices, the classes of society, still stand in outward form as they had stood before foreigners had B 2 4 DOMESDAY. DLL^e ibesr vaj inio £:izil*£L± Tbe onrrad finmevork of law and zovemrxken: icl tirrtyi iis aixieni shape; bm events hare taken pboe, aofd Uie Sar«eT ccaiiiiis the record of tboee erens, br winch that framev<3?k v^as id be ^riiaalbr and sSendr. bo: iDevisabij, modified. Domeyiaj. -chxh -^Hs us bj vbom every scrap of tand was hdd in uire La:er dajs of WiHianu and also br vxKxn ii bad been hdd in the dsLjh of Eaivard. is, above aC diii^ a record of the great Con- £sca:ion. And ihe great Contisranon, akke in what ii was and what it was xkDC. in i3 peculiar character as a transfer of Ei^hsh lands to strazLrerSf b doubt that we ha>'e the Survey itseif in nro different stages of its progress. The Survey seems to have been first made in very great detail, and then, in some cases at least, to have been abridged by leaving out entries which were held to be of only temporary value. In the greater psirt of the kingdom we have the Survey only in its second and shoner form. But in the eastern shires we have the earlier and ftiUer form only, while in the western shires both are presened^ But at both these stages it would seem that great scope was given for \'aneties of treatment, accorpendiz B. and *' Aogli/* see Appendix E. ' See Yol. iii. p. 433. ' See vol. Hi. p. 483 ; Domesday, 62 h, ' See vol. ii. p. 311. 'See roL ir. p. 497. * On the use of the words ^ Franci " NOTICES OF THE TRANSFER OF LAND, ^ purely incidental way on an entr}- implying that there was a moment when the English landowners, as a body, redeemed their lands of the King.' : Enough then peeps out in the way of incidental notices to give to ' a careful student of Domesday, even if he never looked at any other / record or chronicle, a general notion of the real state of the case. By \ putting this and that together, he might conjecture that Harold took i the Crown after the death of Eadward, and that he was killed in a [ battle against William near Hastings. He might also infer with more certainty that a great many Englishmen, especially those who were highest in rank and wealth, had lost their lands under William, and that the lands so lost by Englishmen had been for the most part granted out to strangers. All this a careful observer might learn from the incidental notices in the Survey. And I need not add that inddental notices of the same kind give also a vast deal of information touching other points in the history which do not immediately bear on the nature of William's entry. But it is from the incidental notices only that he would ever learn the true nature of that entry. The ordinary legal language of the Survey assumes that William was the regular successor of Eadward. It simply puts out of sight the facts that Harold reigned or that any opposition of any kind was made to the accession of William. Among these legal fictions of Domesday not the least curious are those which relate to the marking of time. The two great notes of \ time, as I have already said, are the '• time of King Eadward " and the " time when King William came into England." But the compilers of the Survey had sometimes to speak of days which did not come under either of those heads. They had sometimes to speak of days before the time of King Eadward, and sometimes too to speak of a time which, however unpleasant to dwell on, could not wholly be put out of memory, the time between the day when King Eadward was alive and dead and the day when King William came into England. First of all, for any man, French or English, to make out a rightful claim to lands he had to show a grant from William. But moreover, when land had changed owners, the new grantee commonly stepped into the exact position of one or more antecessores or former owners in the > days of Eadward. It was therefore also needful for the owner to show by whom the land had been held under Eadward and by what tenure. On these two requirements all Domesday is founded. The only exception is in the case of ecclesiastical bodies, where, as there had been no forfeiture, no regrant was needed, and where a grant of Eadward or of an earlier King was good as a grant of William.* The reign of Eadward and the reign of William were thus established as * See Tol. IT. p. i6. • See rol. ir. p. 17. 10 DOMESDA Y. the two great periods of legal government, and, except in the rare cases where notice had to be taken of days earlier than the days of Eadward, it was needful, in order to establish the lawfulness of any grant or transfer of land, to show that it had been done during one or J other of those periods of the reign of law. The reign of HaroM was \ a time of usurpation, and all acts done by his authority were void. Yet it was sometimes needful to refer to such acts and to the time in which they were done. The authors of the record were thus driven to many curious shifts in order to stamp all such acts with ill^^ty, and that, as far as pnniblr jthnnt any diinl im nlirin rif riii ntmrprd I authority b^ whfe^ they. l^:ere jlone. We thus find a number of suange ways of expressing the reign of Harold, in most of which Harold's name is not brought in at all.' In dealing with any time between the death of Eadward and the coming of William, the most usual, though not the invariable, way is to say that the event recorded happened " after the death of King Eadward.*' This rule is commonly carried out with such manifest care that we can hardly doubt that the »/ two or three cases where Harold is mentioned are due to simple heedlessness.^ The same spirit of legal fiction which shows itself in the marking of time in Domesday shows itself no less in the way in which the facts of the great confiscation are dealt with. As the reader is left to infer from the merest incidental notices that William was a foreign invader, so it is from notices equally incidental that he is left to infer that any general transfer of lands from men of one nation to another had taken ]jlace. The confiscation, the great result of the Conquest, is as quietly passed by in the Survey as is the Conquest itself. The lawfulness of every transfer of land made by William's authority is of course taken for granted ; that most of those transfers were made from Englishmen to strangers was an accident with which the language of the law did not concern itself. The present and the former owners are entered in the Survey, and it is but seldom that there is anything to show that the new owners had not come in quite peacefully, by bequest, pur- chase, or regular hereditary succession. We commonly find Htde l)eyond the statement that such a man held the land at the time of the Sur\'ey, and that such another man had held it in the time of King Eadward There are only a few instances in which we hear an3rthing of confiscations, oudawries, and the like. The technical word antt^ cessor* is in itself perfectly colourless. In the great mass of the cases where it is found in Domesday, it means a dispossessed Englishman ; but it means a dispossessed Englishman simply because the owner who had gone before the actual owner commonly was a dispossessed ' See Appendix B. ' See above, p. 8. and Appendix B. ' See vol. iv. p. 24, and Appendix L. USE OF THE WORD " A^TTECESSOR:* II Englishmaft The word is equally used to express a Norman pre- decessor of a Norman, or an English predecessor of an Englishman. It is applied no less to the predecessors in office of an ecclesiastical dignitaiy, and we have seen it elsewhere, though not in the great Survey, applied both to the predecessors of William on the throne of England and to the predecessors of Hildebrand in the chair of Peter.^ The word is a purely colourless legal term; still its constant use under the peculiar circumstances of the Survey is practically an euphemism, and it in some sort makes the Survey itself one vast euphemism from beginning to end. The places which speak of the anUcessor and of the rights derived from him to the present owner are endless, and they are specially conunon in the fuller accounts given in the second volume. Some bit of curious information may be gleaned from ahnost every entry of the kind ; but it is only from the constant mention of the aniecessor^ and from the rare mention of the present owner's father, that we could be led to guess that the ante- cfssor was commonly a person who had been dispossessed of his lands by a foreign conqueror. In some cases the euphemistic spirit goes so far, and the doctrine according to which the new grantee stepped into the exact rights of his predecessor is carried so far, that the Norman owner is spoken of as the " heir " of the Englishman who had been turned out of his lands to make way for him. It is especially curious to see this formula made use of in case of those leases which were so often granted and sold by ecclesiastical bodies, most commonly for the term of three lives.* Both before and after the Conquest, it was often hard for the bishoprick or abbey to get back the lands of which it had thus parted \^'ith the temporary pos- session.' A Norman grantee who entered upon the lands of an Englishman was not always inclined to respect the reversionary rights of the Church. But, as by the law of the Conquest the grantee stepped into the exact position of his ancestor^ the right of the Chiu-ch to resume possession remained exactly the same as if the tenant had never forfeited his life-estate in the land. The Norman stepped into his place as the second or third life in the grant ; in the language of the Sur\'ey he is the " second " or " third heir," exactly as if the temporary ownership had passed on by natural succession from father to son.* In most of these cases the effect of the legal fiction was to glose matters over and to put a legal colour upon transactions which were really violent. In one class of cases the effect of legal fiction was the other way. The formulae employed suggest violence, when all that is meant is to mark a particular transaction as illegal. Forms are still * See ToL vt. p. 293. • On the use of the word H«r«5, sec * On these leases by ecclcsiastkil bodies. Appendix F. see Appendix O. * See Appendix L, G. I a DOMESDAY, used in modem legal language by which it seems to be taken for granted that any man who occupies, or even retains, property without a strict legal right, occupies or retains it by dint of force and arms.' These forms of speech are as old as Domesday; and it must be carefully borne in mind that they are only forms of speech. When we read that a man, French or English, held lands by force, it may hai)pen that in that particular case the words are to be taken literally and that the entry was made by actual violence. But the words themselves imply nothing more than that the Domesday CommissioDers looked on his possession as illegal.^ From these legal fictions and euphemisms by which the nature and the details of the great confiscation are veiled in the great Survey, we may turn to the consideration of the Survey itself, looked on as, what it really is more than anything else, a record of that confiscation. Of the general principle on which that confiscation went, and of the way in which it was carried out, I have already said something in my last volume.' The same spirit of legal fiction runs through everything. The doctrine on which the whole treatment of land throughout William's reign was founded, the doctrine that the whole soil of England, with the needful exceptions, was forfeited to the Crown, was itself a legal fiction on a gigantic scale. We have seen that there was a time, shortly after W^ilUam's coronation, when all the English land- owners within William's obedience went through the ceremony of buying back their lands from the King.* This buying back of lands implies that the lands were, if not in actual fact yet at least in legal theory, in William's possession. Now it is quite certain that, at §ie lime of William's coronation and long after, so far was the whole land of England from being in William's possession that in the greater part of the country his kingly title itself was a mere name. It follows then that the process, as applied to the whole kingdom, was simply a legal fiction; but it was a fiction which was to be carried out into fact by such degrees and to such an extent as might be found possible and expedient. If we remember that in William's eyes all lay property throughout England was legally forfeited, but that the forfeiture was at first but sparingly carried into effect, the whole matter becomes plain. l*!v<-n at the time of the Survey, a large number of Englishmen Klill held their own lands or the lands of their fathers undisturbed. At the time of the coronation and of the progress which followed * A ^rote«que caic was when Archbishop see Appendix H. Sancroft went on huldine the manor-house » Sec vol. ir. pp. 14 et seqq. (nilgarly called the palace) at Lambeth * On the passage in Domesday which after hii deprivation, and when, in the legal asserts the general redemption of lands by proceeding! against him, he was said to the English, and the passage in the Peter- have entered it " by force and arms." borough Chronicle which fixes its date, ' On the use of the phrase "per vim,** sec vol. iv. p. 16. REDEMPTION AND GRANTS OF LAND. 13 soon after, comparatively few Englishmen had been disturbed. What William had done up to that time was mainly to seize on the lands of the dead. But from that time every land-owner in the country, French or English, held his lands by a new tenure ; he held them as a personal grant from the reigning King to himself. The whole evidence of Domesday bears out the general deductions which I have made from those two incidental passages in the Survey and in the national Chro- nicle which tell us in so few words what was the principle on which the greatest immediate result of the Norman Conquest was carried out. Of the way in which the land which thus, partly in fact, partly only by a legal fiction, came into William's hands was again granted out by his authority the Survey is the great record. The Survey incidentally serves a crowd of purposes of other kinds. There is hardly a point in the history, the laws, or the manners of the time on which it does not throw some light. But, before and above all other uses, it is the record of the great confiscation. Of the land which, in his reading of the law, had become his, William disposed as he thought good. He granted it to whom he would and on what terms he would But in this, as in all other matters, it is plain that, at no time of his reign, was William inclined to make changes simply for the sake of change. This appears alike in the process by which the lands of Englishmen were restored to them and in the process by which the lands of Englishmen w^e transferred to the hands of strangers. In neither case did William make any change either in the tenure or in the extent of property, beyond what was needed for carrying out his immediate purpose. He had to procure the acknowledgement of his title from those Englishmen who quietly submitted to his rule. This was done by the general redemption of lands, by requiring each English landowner to take out a fresh grant of his lands from the new King. This marks the first stage of the process, when confiscation was mainly applied to the dead, and when the living were largely admitted to favour.^ This was seemingly the state of things during the first stage of William's reign, during his first stay in England, from his coronation to his first return to Normandy.' A new state of things began during his first absence, when it was found that so large a part of the land still held out against him, and that, even in the shires which had already submitted, so large a part of the people was still disposed to revolt. The two short entries which set before us the process of the redemption of lands must be taken in connexion with another entry equally short which sets before us the beginning of a more systematic confiscation of lands, and one no longer to be followed by their restoration to their owners. This is that short passage in the national Chronicles which I have ^ See yoL ir. p. i{. 'See vol. ir. p. 8 a. 14 DOMESDAY. already quoted as saying that William, on his first return from Normandy, " gave away each man's land" ^ In the former passage ire heard only of men buying back their lands, a process on the whole favourable lo them. We now hear of men's lands being given away, which of course implies that they were taken from their owners. That is to say, the confiscation strictly so called, the depriving actual owners of their land and granting them to others, as distinguished from the occupation of lands of dead men and from the mere formal confiscation implied in a new grant, now began to take place on a great scale. IVIany men who had bought their lands back from WiUiam had by this time revolted against him. Their lands were doubtless seized and granted out to fresh owners, mainly, of coarse, to Normans and other strangers. But the confiscations made during William's first Wsit would apply only to a small part of the country ; the West and the North were still independent; but doubtless the same process went on after every conquest of a still independent district, after every suppression of a revolt within a district already subdued. The process of confiscation was thus constantly going on for several years, and it no doubt went on occasionally, as cir- cumstances called for it, during the whole of William's reign. But it is not often that Domesday helps us to the exact date of any particular confiscation or grant. It does so in a few cases, but we are commonly left to make our inferences from the general facts of the history. The estates of a Devonshire man could not be taken from him till after the fall of Exeter, nor can we suppose that the estates of Eadwine and Morkere were confiscated till after their final breach with William at the lime of Hereward's revolt. Beyond indications like these, we are for the most part left in the dark. But, if the Survey for the most part leaves us to guess at the date of the various confiscations and grants, it lets us thoroughly behind the scenes as to the way in which the grants were carried out. Whether the man who received any grant of land from William was French or English, whether he received his own lands back again or received the confiscated lands of another, whether he paid a price for the grant or received it as a free gift, in all these cases alike he had alike lo receive it by a writ under the King's seal, and he had to be put in formal possession by the King or by some officer acting in his name. Whether it was in e\ery case necessary for the grantee to go through both processes, both the personal investiture and the receipt of the written document, may perhaps be doubled ; but it is certain that he who could neither show his writ nor bring evidence of personal livery of seizin was held to have no lawful claim to the lands which he held. We may believe that in many cases, especially in cases of a ' See rol. ir. p. 85. NEED OF THE KINCfS WRIT. 15 fresh grant of small parcels of land, the Commissioners would be satisfied with the evidence of the hundred that the owner had been put in lawful possession. But of course the actual writ and seal of King WiUiam was the best evidence of all. It was, as we have seen, only in the case of ecclesiastical bodies, to which the general forfeiture did not extend, that the writ of King Eadward, or even of some earlier King, was of equal force. Yet it would seem that even ecclesiastical bodies often found it safer, for the better confirmation of their title, to obtain writs from the reigning King. And the pages of the Survey are thick \^ith cases in which the Commissioners report that such and such land is held by owners, sometimes by ecclesiastical corporations, who had no royal writ to produce and who could bring no satisfactory evidence of livery of seizin. This rule was so strictly carried out that we find that, when an English heir — probably the heir of a man who had died at Senlac — entered without a fresh grant on land which in William's views was confiscated to the Crown, he was set down as guilty of an unjust occupation.^ Some entries sound as if the Com> missioners found cases where they thought that the strict application of the law would tell hardly against the actual occupants, and referred them to the King for his favourable consideration.* A large number of other cases in which the writ and seal is men- tioned show that, after all, the writ and seal of William were not always respected by his own followers. This is no more than we should expect in a time when so much property \iz& changing hands against the will of its owners, and when so many opportunities were given for deeds of fraud or violence on the part of the foreign in- truders, sometimes, it is sad to have to add, on the part of English- men who had gained their good ^ill. Thus we find cases in which an English owner found it necessary to beg or buy a fresh grant of his own lands from William, and perhaps, after all, to seek safety by commendation to some Norman or to some Englishman in William's favour. I have already mentioned the case of a man who bought his own lands of the King, and yet found it expedient to commend him- self to Wiggod of Wallingford.* So again we have seen the case in which Azor the " dispensator " had received his land again from King William, but had been unjustly brought down from the rank of a tenant-in-chief to that of an und^r-tenant of Robert of Oily.* In * Domesdaj, 221. " Hanc temm tenuit chonim i. hidam. dooec cum rege inde patcr hojos prxdicti hominis [Eamwine loquatur." Hardwin also holds two acres the prkstl ; homo regis E. fuit. De hac of land of the Abbot " Dc qnibos non teira noo habet iste libcratorem nee bre- habet advocataiti nee liberatorem, sed vem ; fed occopaTit taper regem, ut occopavit super abbatem, at homines de hondrednra tcstatar." hnndredo testantor." For the phrue ** nisi ' Dofoesday, 191. *« Tenet Bardainos rex testificetar,'* see Appendix I. ■■b abbat* per qaemdain reipectom ipsiof ' See roL ir. pp. 29, 497. abbaik [de Ely] de donynico rtxxa bmnm- * See rol. ir. p. 28. 1 6 DOMESDAY. these two cases we distinctly see the new grant of the land to its former owner, and in the former case of the two, where the English- man is described in so many words as buying back his land from the King, we get the clearest instance of the general redemption of lands. The two passages indeed taken together make the best possible ilhis- tration of the kind of haphazard way in which we pick up our know- ledge from the great Survey. The general redemption is mentioned quite incidentally in recording the history of a particular estate. In another entry we find a story which is plainly an instance under the general rule. We are told how Azor redeemed his lands, and even what was the price which he paid for their redemption. But if he had not aften\'ards been imjusdy deprived of those lands, and if the Com- missioners had not thought it their duty to report his story in detail, we might have been left with the single incidental statement of the general law, without any particular instance in illustration of it And we may even believe that our knowledge of the story is due to the fact that it happened in a shire which was so fiilly reported as Berk- shire, and that, if the transaction had happened among the drier entries of the West or North, we should never have heard of it at aH These cases lead us at once to the many cases of commendation^ most commonly of course to Normans, but in some cases to Englishmen who, like Wiggod, contrived to stand high in William's favour. The fuller accounts in the second volume are most instructive on the sub- ject of commendation, and they teach us much as to the steps by which personal commendation changed into a feudal tenure of lands. We find for instance a case in Essex in which a man commends him- self after William's coming to another Englishman whose land was confiscated at a later stage of W^illiam's reign. The man simply com- mended himself personally, and did not give up his land to Ids new lord ; but, when the lord's lands were confiscated, the Norman grantee seized upon the lands of his man along with thenL^ In another case we find a man who had before held of the Crown conmiending him- self to an English lord after William's coming, and binding himself to a money payment.' In some cases we are distinctly told that the conunendation was voluntary.' In others we only infer the commenda- tion from that large class of entries in which a man goes on holding as tenant the land which he had held as his own in the time of King Eadward. In these cases the fall from a higher to a lower tenure was ' Dmnes^lay, iL 71 &. ** Liber homo tinam virgatam terrain qoam tenait de . . . . T. R. WOlelmi effcctiu est homo Rege £. Sed ex quo Tenit W. Rex in aoteceisoris Ranulfi Piperelli, sed ternun Angliam, serriyit Osuooldo, reddens ei xx. soam sibi non dedit. Qoando vero Rex denarios. Hie se potoit vertere quo Tolint dedit terram Ranolfo, saisivit tllam cum T. R. E." alia." » Domesday, ii. 6a 6. « AngUcus T. R.W. ' Domesday, 56 h. ** Tenet Seman eficctos ett homo Goisfndi ^vmie sua,'* CASES OF COMMENDATION, 1 7 most likely taken as a mitigation of utter forfeiture. But in some cases the former owner fell very low indeed. In one case in Essex the former owner had sunk to the estate of a villanus^ a word which was already beginning to bear a meaning much lower than that of the Old-English churl which it translates. And something of the same kind must have been the lot of a man in Buckinghamshire, whose hard tenure of the lands which he had once held as his own has moved the Commissioners to record his lot in a tone of unusual pathos.' One fertile source of dispute which constandy comes up in the Survey throws a very instructive light on the way in which the confis- cations and grants were made. The rule seems to have been that the confiscated lands of a particular man — at all events his confiscated lands in any particular shire or district — were granted as a whole to the new owner, who thus stepped exactiy into the place of his ante- cessor. It was in this way, more than in any other, that one large class of illegal possessions arose. These were those which do not seem to have been the work of high-handed violence, but which may easily have arisen out of the mistakes which were natural in such a state of things. A Norman obtained a grant of all the lands of such and such a dispossessed Englishman in a particular district. He thus became the heir of any disputes which already existed as to the extent and tenure of those lands, and he became further involved in all the disputes which arose in the actual processes of confiscation and fresh grant We have seen in many cases, above all in the famous one of 5ie grant of the lands of Godric to Henry of Ferrers,' that, in such a process as this, the lands which the antecessor held in his own right, those which he held of any other lord, and those which his own men held of him, were apt to get confounded. Those who were wronged in these ways, whether clerks or laymen, corporations or individimls, French or English, seem to have systematically brought their com- plaints before the Commissioners, by whom they were fairly entered in the Survey. And, besides cases of this kind, there are others which seem to show that an unscrupulous grantee would sometimes round off his estates by seizing small parcels of land which lay conveniently for his purpose, though they did not come within the terms of the King^s grant From all these causes we find in the Survey constant notices of disputes as to the extent of the estate of the dispossessed En^ishman, and as to the nature of his tenure. * tribus suis filiis dispertivit T. R. E." And ton (Chelmetone) of him " pro fili& ejus again, 35 6, of another lordship in the quae ibi est.*^ Of grants of this kind for same shire, "Duo fratrestenueruotT.R.E. the maiiitenaace of the grautor himtdf PERSONAL NOTICES IN THE SURVEY, n corded;^ in another place we read of the widow who forfeited her lands by the crime of marrying again within the year of grief.* The great Survey leads ug to the bedside of the dying man to hear his verbal disposi- tion of his goods ;' it lets us into the most kindly relations of family life; it tells us what lands were received in marriage with the wife ;* it tells us how the married priest, with his wife's consent, commended himself to the Church for the lands of her dower,* and what lands were granted out in marriage with the daughter/ In one case at least the dignity of the Conunissioners relaxed so far as to make a legal document speak the language of romance, and to record something which reads very like the ins and outs of a love-match.' It sets before us the ever fluctuating relations between the spiritual and temporal owners of land. We see the constant gifts of the laity to the Church, and we see the ways, almost as constant, by which the Church was defrauded of property to which it had a legal right We see how the wealthy sinner strives to buy spiritual profits by gifts which were to be made at the cost, not of himself, but of his heirs ; ^ and we see how an heir there is i case ra 239, where the abbey of Malmesbary holds three hides of land in Warwickshire, on which it is noted, ** Ul- uuinos mooachos tenuit, e't ipse dedit ecclesi« quando factus est monachus.'* Another more carious case is found in ii. 3636, where we read of some lands in Suffolk belonging to the abbey of Saint Eadmund, "Hujus tenam Rex accepit de abbate et dedit Guenioui de Peiz ; postea JiceDtia regis deveniens monachus reddidit terram.** * Domesday, ii. 196. " Habait Alma- ros terram istius Anant et socii fuerunt, et subita morte fuit mortuus." ' Domesday, ii. 199. A certain God- wine held lands of the East-Anglian Bishoprick. He seems to have died, ** et postquam Rex W. venit in banc terram, in- rasit Almarus episcopus (see rol. iv. p. 223) pro foris&ctnra, quia mulier quae tenuit nnpsit intra annum post mortem viri.*' -'* I hare quoted the remarkable entry of the nuncupative will of Wulfwig at the beeinning of Appendix G. * Of this take an English and a Norman case. In p. 36 there is an entry among the lands of Geoffrey of Mandeville in Surrey ; " habet quidam faber regis dimi- diam hidam, quam T. R. £. accepit cum uxore suA, sed nunquam inde servitium fecit." On the other hand, in 218 is a long list of the lands of Azelina, the wife of Ralph TaiUebois, many of which are said to be held ** de maritagio,** and of one part of which we read, •* hanc terram clamat Hugo de Belcarop super Azelinam, dicens eam habere injuste nee ejus dotem unquam fuisse." * Domesday, ii. 431 h. ** Brantestuna tenuit ^dmundus presbyter commendatus sanctac ^theldredac T. R. E., et terram quam cepit cum uxore ejus de Brantestuna et Cloptuua misit in ecclesia, concedente muliere, tali conventione quod non potuit vendere nee dare de ecclesia.** But at the time of the Survey the lands of Eadmund had passed to William of Arques. • Domesday, 36. " Hanc terram dedit ei Goisfridus de Mannevil cum fili& suA." "* Domesday, ii. 232. " Quidam liber homo in Pinkeuham tenuit idem xzx. acras terras, et postquam rex venit in istam patriam, tenuit istam terram comes R[adulfus] S[talra]. Unus homo Wihenoc amavit quamdam fceminam in iUk tent et duxit eam, et postea tenuit ille istam terram ad foeduro 'W[ibenoc] sine dono regis et sine liberatione et successoribus suis." There is a good deal about this Wihenoc and his invasiones, but he does not appear as a land-owner at the time of the Survey. His forfeiture however must have happened somewhat late in William's reim. ' Take for instance Domesday, ii. 2046. **Parvam Meltunam tenuit Edu- inus T. R. £. de Sancto Benedicto, et ita 24 DOMESDAY. once in possession was often unwilling to give back to dieir legal owner the lands in which his father had only a temporary right.* We trace, as we can trace by no other means, how here .and there an English landowner kept his lands and increased them by the Con- queror's favour; how a crowd of others kept their estates or some fragment of them by way perhaps of alms ; but how the mass of the men, great and small, who had held the lands of England in the days of her freedom, whether dead or alive, whether outlawed or within the King's peace, became, as far as land and its rights were concerned, mere things of the past, whose names were remembered only because the extent of their lands and of their rights formed the measure of the rights of the strangers who stepped into their places. It brings us nearer to those days and to the men who lived in them, when we can, as it were, see the Norman intruder and his English an/ecessorfzce to face, when we can trace the personal fate of the men who followed William and of the men who fought against him. We read in the Chronicles of the gallant exploit by which Tokig the son of Wiggod saved the life of William at Gerberoi. We wish to know more of the Englishman who thus gave his own life for his Norman sovereign. We turn to the great Survey, and we find the history, if not of the man himself, yet of his house and kindred and neighbours, recorded in this and that piece of incidental detail, till we feel as if the whole Thegnhood of Berkshire in the days of King Eadward and of King William, were among the men of our own personal knowledge. Names like Eadnoth and Bondig and Esegar and the Kentish ^thelnoth, which in history flit before our eyes like shadows^ become clothed with truer life as we trace out the extent and fate of their lands, as we ever and anon light on some incidental notice which sets before us the men themselves and their doings. It is the Survey which enables us to grasp the small kernel of truth round which the great legend of Hereward has gathered, and which enables us to put together our scattered notices of a life in which truth was stranger than fiction, the life of ^thelsige of Ramsey. From the hill of Lincoln we look do^Ti on the towers of Coleswegen, but it is from the Survey alone that we learn their date and their builder ; without its aid we could never have fixed a land- mark so precious alike in the local history of his own city and in the history of English, and even of European, art. And it is with a higher interest still that we pick out here and there the few names of the men who fought around Harold at Stamfordbridge and at Senlac, and whose memory, save for the great inquisition of the foreign King, would have passed away for ever. And, to turn from our countrymen to that one man among our conquerors who can claim the sympathy of Englishmen, when we have seen the corpse of Harold borne to its quod earn abbad concesserat post mortem ^ I have collected a number of cases of luam." this kind in the beginning of Appendix G. ILLUSTRATIONS OF HISTORY. ag first unhaHowed resting-place by the care of hi& Norman compaier^ we are well pleased when the Survey enables us to trace that compater's later fate, from the day when he became the prisoner of the Danes at York till the day when he died fighting against Hereward in the fens ofEly.^ But it is not only in the personal and biographicsd notices which are scattered up and down its columns that the great Survey sets the history of the age before us. No other source of knowledge sets before us the whole state of the country in the same speaking way. One happy feature in the character of the Survey, the orders given to the Commissioners to enter the state of things under King Eadward as well as under King William, could hardly have found a place in the inquiry if King William had not givea himself out as in all things the lawful successor of King Eadward. It is then to this daring legal fiction that we owe the living picture which the Survey made after the Conquest gives us of the days before the Conquest. It is this legal fiction which makes the Survey our chief authority as to the various classes of men and as to the tenures of land in England during the last days of the West-Saxon dynasty. From the same source comes our fullest knowledge of the state of the Old-English towns, their con- stitution, their rights and properties, the duties which were laid upon them in peace and war. And Domesday sets before us, in a few dry entries here and there, the havoc which had been made in many an English town, whether in the course of warfare or through the op- pression of the days of peace. There is something specially striking in the calm statistics which record the overthrow of so many dwellings of Englishmen, and above all when that overthrow was wrought to make way for the building of the castles which were in English eyes the special homes of wrong and badges of bondage.' To Domesday also we owe a knowledge more minute than we could have got from any other source of the local divisions of England, of her shires, hundreds, and manors. We see how nearly the great divisions of our own times still follow those which William found in the land, so that, within England proper — in marked contrast to most other parts of Europe — the map which represents the divisions of our own times represents in the main the divisions in the time of the Conqueror. More minute research will indeed often bring to light differences be- tween the Domesday boundaries of shires, hundreds, and manors, and the boundaries of the same divisions in our own time. These minute variations and their causes are matters for the local historian of each particular district, rather than for the general historian of the whole land. But the existence of such minute variations in boundaries that have remained essentially the same is of itself a speaking witness to * See vol. iv. pp. iSo, 320. ' See Appendix N. 26 DOMESDAY. their permanence.^ Domesday teaches us, better than anj other witness of those times can teach us, that the England of the elevmith century and the England of the nineteenth are one and the same thing. Rutland alone, in the very heart of the land, remains an in- soluble problem.^ The western frontier of the four shires bordering on Wales has gone back, simply because the dominion of England has gone forward. The formation of new shires later than Domes- day in the land between Mersey and Solway is less a pait of die internal history of England than the last chapter in the long and iraried history of that border land, call it Strathclyde, Cumberland, or whit we will, in which all the races which have any share in the present population of our island miay claim an interest' And Domesday is not only our best guide to the geography of its own times^ it not ^y teaches us names and boundaries, but it teaches us, in a way in whidi no other witness can, the widely different fate which befell different districts of England in the days of the Conquest. It is from Domes- day alone that we learn how sweeping a confiscation it was whidi fdl on the lands through which the Conqueror s army first marched, bow Kent, Sussex, and Surrey became, above all other shires, the prey of the spoiler, and how Kent, the land whose ^^-arriors had gathered closest around the Standard of the Fighting Man, met its glorious punishment in the doom which decreed that no English tenant-in- chief might hold a rood of Kentish soiL^ It is Domesday akme which enables us to contrast this sweeping confiscation in the sooth- eastern shires with the milder fate which fell u[>on Wiltshire and Nottingham,' and above all with the good luck which enabled so many of the chief men of Lincoln, city and shire, to keep under the Norman * The chan^ of bonndaries of this kind betveen the map of England accord- ing to Domesday and the map of England as it stands now are rery considerable in point of number. But they belong so wholly to the local antiquities of each par- ticular district that I hare not attempted to go into them. The changes in the border shires, those on the marches of Wales and of the lands attached to Scot- land, are another nutter. They are part of the general history of the country. • See vol. i. p. 380; rol. iv. p. 131. The Rutland of Domesday does not ap- pear as an independent shire, but as an appendage, not of any of the shires which join it, but of Nottinghamshire, from which it lies quite apart. But, small as the shire still is, its Domesday boundaries are stin narrower. A great part of the pre- sent Rutland was then rcdLooed to Nortb- hamptooshire. I may add, as beuing oa the mention of this shire in my first ▼olume, that to talk about *' RotlandsAav" is as unknown on the spot as to talk about ** Cumbcrlandshire ** is anywhere. ' See ToL i. p. 429. Besides the omis- sion of the B^nician shires, the modcfn Northumberland and the modem Bishop- rick of Durham, Domesday knowi no- thing of the shires of Cumbcriand, Wcrt- moreland, and Lancaster. (See vol. it. p. 532.) Part of the modem Cumberiaad and Westmoreland belongs to Yoikshire, so much namely as came within the diocese of York. The rest of Cumberland and Westmoreland was still a Scottish holding till the colonization of Carlisle by William Rufus. * See voL \y. p. 21, and Appendix O. * On Wiltshire, see voL ir, p. 17 ; and on Nottinghamshire, p. 131. ILLUSTRATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY. 27 rule some share of what they had held in better times.^ No amount of rhetoric brings home to us the hanying of the North like the awful entries of " waste " which follow the eye in page after page of the Yorkshire Survey.' And almost more speaking sUll is the conspicuous absence of that still more northern land in which Walcher and Robert of Comines had met their fate.' If Domesday stood by itself as our ^ only record of those times, its dry entries, its legal fictions, the hard/^ conventional point of view from which it looks at everything, would give us a very meagre and distorted notion of the facts of the history. But the recorded history of those times, even those precious entries where the heart of England speaks in the patriotic voice of the Peter- borough Chronicler, would lose half their value, many parts of the tale would be dark and perplexing indeed, if we had not the Norman Survey as its commentary. Yet this is not all that Domesday does for us. Its most incidental notices are sometimes the most precious. We have seen that it is to an incidental, an almost accidental, notice in the Survey that we owe our knowledge of the great fact of the general redemption of lands.^ And there is a special interest also in those incidental notices of another kind which set before us no great fact of national history, but which light up the picture with some little piece of local detail We seem to be tn*ought nearer to those times when the Commissioners stop to notice a new church, a new and goodly house, or a fertile vineyard;' when they tell us of the hall of Earl Waltheof,* or of the new fishery that had been made by Earl Harold.'' And we feel the like when they, as they do far more commonly, stop to point out how the haUs of Englishmen had i>erished," how the worth of land had gone down since the days of King Eadward, or how it had been either laid waste through the accidents of war and revolution or wantonly turned into a wilderness for the savage sports of the intervals of peace.' * See ToL IT. pp. 143, 143. ■ See ToL if. p. 194. » See voL ir. pp. 158, 457. * See above, p. i a, and vol. ir. p. 16. ' See the entries ooder the lands of Eadward of Salisbury, Domesday 69 ; " Ibi zL acrx prati et zx. acrae pastors et 1. acne sOts minutae et ecdesia nova et demos optima et vinea bona." The place is Wilcot in Wiltshire. * Domesday, 330. *" In Hallon .... haboit Wallef oomes anlam .... Hanc terram habet Rogerios [de Busli] de Judita ^ Domesday, 306. "Hanc piscariam haboit Heraldos comes in Mortelaga T. R. £^ et Stigaodos archiepiscopaf haboit diu T. R. W., et tamen dicunt quod Heraldos vi coostruxit eam T. R. E. in terra de Chingestone et in terra S. Paoli.** ■ Domesday, 41. **Leouinus et Ul- ooardos teoocront in pangio de episcopo et non potoeront ire qoolibet; quisque haboit aulam. Qoando Oermanos recepit, non nisi ona aob fait." So 62. '*Dq« halhe fberont, modo ona.** • See vol. iv. p. 334. For the de- vastations of Earl Hogh, cf. 186 6; "In his wastis terris ezcreveront silvae in quibus isdem Osbemus venationem exercet et inde habet qood capere potest oil aliud.** Cf. also the entries on the next page. Bot there seems to be a distinction between Qtbem who only wilfully kept the land 28 DOMESDAY. We feel at home as we read of the mill which, for lack of water m the hot season, could be worked in the winter onlj ; * of the other miD, set up since King Eadward's days, whose working endangered the diips in Dover harbour ; ^ of the new tolls which had not been levied in King Eadward's days, which the new lords of the soil had set op, but of which the Commissioners clearly did not approve ; or of the market set up by the Norman lord which brought to nothing the moie ancient market of his English neighbour.' Even the entries which caused special wrath at the time, the searching inquiries which left no ox or cow or s^ine unrecorded,* help, as we trace them page after page in the sur\'eys of the eastern and western shires, to bring the general picture of the land more vividly before us. Never was there a dry legal record so full of human interest of every kind as the great Survey of England. Every human relation, every position of life, every circumstance which could call forth joy or sorrow, the wafl of the dispossessed, the overbearing greed of the intruder,, the domestic details of courtship, marriage, dowry, inheritance, bequest,, and burial, all are there. ** Qoidquid agnnt hoouDes, rotnm, timof , in, ToluFta]^ Gaadia, discursos, nostri est fanago libdlL'* * In the pages of Domesday, among all the dryness of legal fonnnbe, we can hear the cry of the poor under the rod of a grasping neighbour or of a heartless official ; • we see the private spite or private favour of the self-seeking reeve, French or English indifferendy, recorded in so many words ; '* we trace out, recorded no less faithfully if in less out- spoken words, the nepotism of the Bishop who made a maintenance for his kinsfolk out of the estates of the Church entrusted to him ; ' waste wbich bad alrradr been wasted, and Earl Hogfa who made a wilderness of set parpose. This comes oat renr fordblj in an entry in Exoo. 5, where we read of ^ iu hidae dc qmb-js bomioes ibi mancntes fiiieati sent propter forrstam rc^is." • Docnesdaj, 155 h. • Domcsdar, I . ** In introitn poitus de DoTerc est onnm moleodinnm cnod omncs pene aares cooftingit per magnara tuba- tionem maris et maxinnim damnum fich regi et hominibcs et non frnt ibi T. R. E." lb. ** Rogerins de Ostreham fecit qoamdam domnm snper a<;iiam regis el tcnnit hoc Qsqoe coQsoetDdiiiem r^is, nee domos fnit ibi T. R. E.'* • See ToL ir. p. 510. • See roL ir. p. 471. The inqoirj was not followed br any great resoh in a manor in Essex, entered in c. 78. where it is re> corded that Peter of Valognes, *'qnando recepit hoc manennm, oec lovcjut Bin onom boTcm." There were however Br> teen at the time of the Snrrcj. > jurenal, u 185. * Take for instance the entry qooted in rot. IT. p. I49; "Pauper ram matre re- damat.** It soonds Uke the end of a hexameter. ^ I shall deal specially widi die reeta in Appendix P. Bat I wifl qoote out entry here. In p. 33 we read of hods in Snnvy, ** Abbas de Certesi tenet nam hidaro <|aam praHcctns TiDae fanjoi, pnfitcf' inimicitiam qnamdam, ah isto muierio abstnlit et mint in Certesi.* * See the stones of Brihtbcih in Ap- pendix D ; of Hermann in vol. ii. p. 269 ; of Gnthmnnd, roL iii. p. 46, and Appnwfii L. So of the Norman Bishop Er&st, ii. p. 1 15« ** ex his sncimannis tenet Ricardni iiL de dono Ar&sti cptscopi." AndiniiSft MISCELLAKEOUS NOTICES. 29 and we see the introdhig stranger throwing the heritage of Englishmen as a gift to the basest partners of his amusements or his lusts.^ We see the course of justice or of injustice, how one evfl-doer meets with death e of gold told or weighed to him, or else the spiritual profit which belongs to those who give alms to the blind and the lame, to the widow and the ori^iarL* We see him in his softer moments, as the bereaved father 'making grants for the soul of the son whom he had untimely lost.* «€ find of tbe cbmcfa of Saint Mary at Tbetford **modo tcncnt filn Aifasti epi- Kopi,* so that be was at least no iro- prorancnt 00 his English predeccsMr ' In 38 (, at Cladford in HampsfaiTe, we find, ** de isto manerio tenet aU>as de Lire (see ToL vf. p. 365) iii. mgatas terne et hen, ends with the accession of Henry the Second. Thus, on the whole, the authorities with which we are already familiar lead us nearly to the end of our period, some of them increasing in value as they go on. We get also some new helps. For the reign of Rufus and for the early part of the reign of Henry, we have the precious writings of Eadmer, the English-bom biographer of Ansdm, both his formal Life of the saint and his hr more valuable Historia Novorum. These are the forerunners of those vast stores of writings of the same kind which distinguish the reign of Henry the Second. In the later part of our period, the anonymous writer of the Gesta Stcphani gives us a detailed account of the early part of Stephen's reign, but becomes fragmentary and breaks off in its latter part. This writer in the interest of Stephen must "he compared throughout with William of Malmesbury, who writes in the interest of his own patron Eari Robert. The reign of Stephen is also recorded by the two northern writers Richard and John of Hexham, and we have a separate tract by ^thelred of Rievaux on the Battle of the Standard. The Latin elegiac poem bearing the strange name of ** Draco Normannicus,** published in the Appendix to the works of Cardinal Mai (Rome, 1871), contains much less than might have been looked for. For the latter days of Stephen, the historians of Henry the Second*s time, as Ralph of Diss, Roger of Howden, and Gervase of Canterbury, begin to be of use. Among continental writers, light is thrown on the foreign events of Henry the First's rdgn by Abbot Suger's Life of Lewis the Sixth, and the Norman side of Stephen's time is best told ia the con* D a 36 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, William, have affected the course of all later history in a way that neither Norman nor English vanity can ventw^ to maintain that William has done. He cannot, in a view of miiversal history, claim to have left his impress on all time like Alexander, Caesar, Constantine, and Charles. His work, after all, was bounded by a single island and a small portion of the neighbouring mainland. But, witibin that com- paratively narrow range, William wrought a work which, in one sense indeed, has been far more abiding Aan theirs. Of each of those Lords of the World we may say that the influence of his work has been eternal, but that his work itself has fallen in pieces. But within William's island world, in the Empire where, he could be at once King and Caesar, not only has the influence of his work been eternal, but his work itself still abides. His work has been more lasting because it has been in some sort less brilliant. Almost alone among conquerors, be conquered, neither to destroy nor to found, but to continue. The monarchy of England, in the shape which it has taken ever since William's day, has been William's work. But it has been his work, it has received from him a new life and a lasting character, because he was content, not to wipe out, but carefully to preserve, the old laws and constitution, the ver>' titles and formulae, of the reahn which he claimed as his lawful heritage. The legal fictions of Domesday, the formula of the antecessor y the calm assumption of Eadward as the im- mediate antecessor of William, bear witness to something more than the spirit in which the actual details of the Conquest were carried out. They set forth in truth the great lesson of the continuity of English history; they teach us, as if from the mouth of William himself, that it is not with the coming of William that the history or the law of England began. But they set forth too the harder lesson, the paradox as it may seem, that it is mainly owing to the coming of William that we owe our unbroken connexion with iElfred, Ecgberht, and Cerdic. It is owing to the momentary overthrow, to the seeming momentary destruction, of our old kingship, our old freedom, our old national r being, that we have been able, more truly than any other European I nation, to keep them all as an unbroken possession for eight centuries after they had seemed to perish. Strange as it may seem, the Norman Conquest has, in its results, been >the best preserver of the older life of Kngland. When we compare our history with that of nations which never unt»l and miscellaneous writers, Life of him by Dean Church. Since this and the grrat series of our public records Chapter was first written we have gained begins during this period with the single the greatest help of all. The first volume l*ilK:-roU of the thirty-first year of Henry of Professor Stubbs* Constitutional History the First. Among modem writers the has thrown a flood of light on this, as on only general narrative of much consequence all other periods coming within its range. CONSERVATIVE EFFECTS OF THE CONQUEST, 37 Germany and Scandinavia, we see that, through that very foreign conquest, we have been enabled to keep on a political being far more unbroken than they have. We have not had, like Germany, to re- construct our national being, after being split in pieces for ages. We have not had, like the Scandinavian kingdoms, to set up our freedom again as something new, or at least restored, after a longer or shorter interval of acknowledged despotism. That this difference we owe to the Norman Conquest, that, owing it to the Norman Conquest, we owe it mainly to the personal action of the Norman Conqueror, is the thesis which I shall strive to make good in the remaining Chap- ters of this my last volume. In one point alone can I see that the coming of the Norman has done us lasting harm. One direct, though not immediate, result of the Norman Conquest, which Germany and Scandinavia have escaped, has been the lasting corruption on English lips of the common mother-tongue. At the very beginning of this work* I pointed out the peculiar character of William's Conquest, as compared with the conquests of times before and after it. I said then that it carried with it a less amount of change than the national settlements in the days of the Wandering of the Nations, a greater amount of change than the mere political conquests of later days. It may not be amiss to compare it, both in its nature and in its results, with two other famous conquests, one of the earlier, the other of the later time. William the Great himself need not blush to be ranked in the same class with Theodoric, and between William and Charles of Anjou, between the Conqueror of England and the Conqueror of Sicily, there are not a few direct points of likeness. The reign of Theodoric in Italy, like the reign of William in England, was a reign of legal fictions. The theory ac- cording to which William lawfully succeeded to the crown of his cousin Eadward was a fiction not more transparent than the theory according to which the King of the East-Goths entered Italy by an Imperial commission, as a Roman Patrician sent to win back a lost province of the Empire from the grasp of the Tyrant Odoacer.' The nature of the two fictions was opposite. It was as needful for the position of Theodoric that he should not give himself out as King of the Italians' as it was needful for the position of William that he should give himself out a!t King of the English. But it was on a legal fiction, on a system of decorous formulae which veiled the fact * Sec vol. i. p. a. The story is told io the same spirit by • Some passages on this head will be Jordanes, 57. found collected in the British Quarterly * This title seems to be purposely Review for October, 187a, p. 3a5. See avoided, even when Jordanes comes as especially the description of Thcodoric's near to it as ** Gothorum Romanorumque mission given by the anonymous writer at regnator." See the article in the British the end of Ammianus (7 1 7 cd. Gronoviiu). Quarterly Review already quoted, p. 325. 38 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, that they were in truth Kings by the edge of the sword, that the power of Theodoric and the power of William alike rested. And it is not too much to say that it was the different nature of the legal fiction in the two cases which led to the difference in character and duration between the dominion founded by Theodoric and the dominion founded by William. The legal fiction under which Theodoric set forth was one which carried \vith it the destruction of his dynasty. The Imperial commission by which alone the Gothic King claimed to reign in Italy might be withdra^Mi by the authority which had granted it. The Imperial claims were not likely to be heard of as long as the Gothic monarchy was strong, but they were sure to be put forward, and very vigorously and effectively they were put forward, as soon as the Gothic monarchy became weak. But the legal fiction by which William claimed the English Crown contained in it no such elements of destruction. It was one which, in its own nature, could not fail to grow stronger and stronger. William gave himself out, neither as a foreign conqueror nor as the representative of an absei\t over-lord, but as the rightful successor of the Kings who had gone before him. As he and his dynasty became settled in the land, as the immediate effects of the foreign Conquest wore away, the fiction ceased to be a fiction. The King by the edge of the sword came in truth to be, what he claimed to be, King according to the law of England. And the dif- ferent natures of the legal fictions by which Theodoric claimed to reign in Italy and William to reign in England affected their position and the duration of their dominion in another way. Each came pro- fessing, and each came, we may believe, really purposing, to rule according to the laws of the land in which he found lumself. In the case of the Goth, the question between Roman and Gothic law could hardly arise ; Ataulf had found out before him that it was only by the laws of Rome that the world could be governed.* But besides this, the Patrician, the lieutenant of the Emperor, could not fail, from the very nature of his position, to rule over Romans according to Roman law. So William, as lawful King of the English, could not fail, from the very nature of his position, at least to profess to rule England according to English law. But both Theodoric and William brought with them what might seem to be a great hindrance to peaceful and lawful government, in the shape of a foreign army, by the help of which each won his conquest. It is in the treatment of their followers that the difference bet^'een the position of Theodoric and that of William comes out most strongly. The Italians could hardly look on the Goths as enemies. They had won no victory over any Italian army, nor was any Italian dispossessed of his lands in order to enrich them. The victories won by the barbarian host of Theodoric were ^ Such is the declaration which Orosius, the mouth of Ataulf. See Comparative JDSt at the close of his History, puts into Politics, 329, 495. COMPARISON BETWEEN WILLIAM AND THEODORIC. 39 won wholly over the barbarian host of Odoacer. The lands which Odoacer had akeady distributed among his followers stood ready to reward the followers of Theodoric without any further disturbance of Roman owners.^ The man who was at once Roman Patrician and Gothic King kept his Roman and his Gothic subjects separate ; they lived apart, each nation according to its own law, and the common ruler of both stood ready in case of need to do equal justice between them. In Theodoric's view, repose and dignity fell to the lot of the Roman, while the toils of government and warfare fell to the lot of the Goth. The Roman had but to enjoy his own in peace, while the Goth stood by as his armed defender. The splendour and dignity of government still remained in the hands of the Roman Consul ; it was only the toils of the ruler which the Gothic King took for his own share.* While the great King himself lived, we may believe that such a picture as this was more than a dream, more than a theory. But when his strong hand was taken away, all was changed. The Goths had no root in the land ; they were but a foreign army encamped on Italian soil. Presently they were felt to be, not only a foreign army but an hostile army, and they were cut off in warfare with other foreign armies whom the abiding magic of a name caused Italy to look on as countrymen and deliverers. The followers of William, on the other hand, had won their victory over Englishmen. It was only at the cost of Englishmen that the share which they had borne in conquering England could be rewarded. Hence, while the reign of Theodoric was a reign of peace and happiness, the reign of William was a reign of grief and oppression, a reign of robbery and slaughter. But for the very reason that the beginnings of the Norman rule in England were so much darker than the beginnings of the Gothic rule in Italy, the Norman rule in England took root and ceased to be a Norman rule, while the Gothic rule in Italy was stamped out almost within the memory of those who had seen its beginnings. The Goths, standing apart as a foreign army for the defence of Italy, never became Romans. The Normans, dividing among themselves the lands of England to be held according to English law, became Englishmen with wonderful speed. We might stop, not without advantage, to compare the per- sonal characters of the great Goth and the great Norman. The death of Waltheof may be set against the deaths of Boetius and Symmachus; but if the early days of William form a bright contrast to the turbulent youth of Theodoric and to the treacherous slaughter of Odoacer by his own hand," the Italian reign of Theodoric, the reign of a true father of his people, has nothing like the harrying of Northumberland and the more wanton desolation of Hampshire. But it is of more ' Prokopiot, Bell. Goth. i. I. death of Odoacer, see the article in the ' Cassiodorus, ri. I ; vii. 3. British Quarterly Review already quoted* * Oa the early life of Theodoric and the p. 325. 40 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. moment to mark what came in each case of the policy into which tbr peculiar position of either conqueror led him. The paternal rule of Theodoric, his careful isolation of his Gothic followers, gave Italy one generation of happiness, to be followed by the overthrow of his djmasty, by the extirpation of his nation, by the long desolation of Italy at tbc hands of the Goth, the Frank, and the motley armies of Eastern Rome. The oppressions and spoliations of William's reign, the division of the lands of England among his foreign followers, not only preserved his Crown to his descendants for ever, but it proved in the end the means of preserving the freedom and the national life of England. The wefl nigh despotic power which William handed on to his successors woke up again the spirit which a milder rule might have lulled to sleep. And, when the day of uprising came, the ancient sons of the soU found worthy comrades and leaders in the descendants of the men among whom William had parted out the lands of their forefathers, comrades whose hearts were now found to be as truly English as their own. The Italian and Sicilian conquests made by Norman adventurers in William's own day have been more than once incidentally referred to in the course of our History. In them too we may see the force of a legal fiction. The captive Leo the Ninth, or one of his successors, was made to confirm the past and future conquests of his captors, and to grant out both Apulia and the as yet untouched land of Sicily as fiefs of the Holy Sec.^ The only question is whether so impudent a pretext as this has any right to the name even of a legal fiction. The formal right of the Emperor Zeno to send a Patrician to rule Italy in his name could not be denied. Eadward had no right to dispose of the kingdom of England, but he had a right to a voice in its c^sposal, and to claim the Crown of England by virtue of his alleged bequest was at least less monstrous than to claim the dominions of the Eastern Emperor by virtue of a grant from the Bishop of the Old Rome. Still there can be no doubt tiiat the papal grant did much to advance and strengthen the power of the Normans in Italy, and that it did much to enable their conquests to take the form of an united and regular kingdom. Still the grant of Leo did but give a shadow of legal sanction to a process of conquest which had already begun. Both Theodoric and William, on the other hand, announced to the world their purposes, and the justification of those purposes, before they set forth on their several expeditions. And, like the claim of Theodoric, but unlike the claim of William, the papal inves- titure of the Norman in Italy carried with it the destruction of the power which it had once strengthened. The nominal over- lordship of Leo became a terrible reality in the hands of those Pontiffs ' Sec Geoffrey Malatcrra, i. 14 (Moratori, v. 553); William of Apulia, ii. 400 (Pcrtz, ix. 262). WILLIAM AND CHARLES OF ANJOU. 4 1 of the thirteenth century who professed to dispose of the vassal crown at their will, and who sent crusading armies to enforce their grants. In some points then the Angevin Conquest of Apulia and Sicily has more likeness to William's Conquest of England than to their earlier conquest by William's own countrymen. William set forth as a Crusader before the true Crusades had begun. Charles of Anjou set forth as a Crusader, when Crusades had silready begun to be turned away from their true object. In each case the spiritual power backed up the ambition of the temporal princ^, but the immediate relations of the spiritual and temporal powers were reversed in the two cases. William claimed the English Crown, and the far-seeing policy of Hildebrand saw that to support his claim by a papal sanction would one day turn to the advantage of the See of Rome. Urban the Fourth and Clement the Fourth had their own reasons for compassing the overthrow of Manfred. They needed the arm of a temporal prince to carry out their purposes, and what Edmund of Lancaster could not do for them they found that Charles of Anjou could do. In the two conquerors themselves there are, as I have already said, strong points of likeness. In both we see the same iron will, the same unbending sternness in carrying out a purpose which we may believe that each had taught himself to look on as righteous. In both we may see the strong influence of a formal religion, a religion which in neither case was without its fruit in the personal virtues of the man, little as it did in either case to soften the hardness of the ruler. Yet by the side of Charles William might pass for gentle. York and Le Mans were lost and won again, but their recovery was not marked by such cold- blooded slaughter as marked the hour when the entry of Charles put an end to the second day of Massaliot freedom.* Conradin and Frederick of Austria were foes more to be dreaded than Eadgar and Eadwine, but their beheading at Charles's bidding stands out in con- trast with the conduct of the Conqueror, who never sent men to the scaffold for withstanding him in open batde. The general government of Charles seems to have been more oppressive than that of William, and the immediate cause of the Sicilian revolt shows that Charles was less zealous than William to put down a class of outrages of which neither was guilty in his own person. He had his reward in seeing with his own eyes half the kingdom which he had conquered rent away from him and his house. The differences between the later histories of England and of the Two Sicilies belong perhaps to causes over which neither Charles nor William had any control Southern Italians, Normans and Frenchmen settled in Southern Italy, had not the same means for keeping up a vigorous national life as Englishmen and Anglicized Normans. Yet William and Charles were alike in this. Each was * See vol. iy. p. 373. 42 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, able, by help of a legal fiction, by help of a papal blessing, to leave behind him a lasting dynasty in the land which he conquered. The dynasty founded by Charles was at least more long-lived than the dynasty founded by Theodoric. The dynasty founded by William ^ abides among us still. The distinctive feature then of William's Conquest is that its results have been, above those of all other conquests, lasting and unbroken. William's entry was made by force, but its effects have been wrought silently and peacefully. In many respects the result of William's Con- quest was merely to strengthen and hasten tendencies which were sdready at work in England. In some cases its effect was to har- monize and to reconcile tendencies which in their own nature were conflicting. Thus, before William came, England was making swift steps in the direction of closer national unity, and thereby of greater authority in the common centres of unity, in the common King of the whole English people, in the common Witenagem6t of the whole English land. On the other hand, England was also tending towards those feudal notions and relations which in other lands did so much to break up all national unity and to weaken the power of all common central institutions. Here were two conflicting tendencies. Had they been left to their own developement, without any compressing force from without, they might have wrought the same result in England which they did in France. We might have seen, as in France, the king- dom split up into a number of practically independent principalities, to be joined together in after times, one by one, in the hands of a despotic King. We might have seen, as in France, the holders of military fiefs, great and small, grow into an exclusive nobility, in one age defying the Crown in the exercise of its lawful authority, in another age sinking into the abject hangers-on of a despot's court. From all this William saved us. His great distribution of lands, to be held of hun- self as lord, gave the greatest impulse to feudal ideas of every kind.* But he took care that the King should never be sunk in the lord ; he took care that his own vassals and the vassals of his vassals should be his subjects as well. The oath which all men took in the great Gem6t of Salisbury^ saved us from the worst evils of feudalism as they showed themselves in other lands. William carried out the work of the West-Saxon Kings to its full accomplishment. He made England truly one, and he settled, for many ages at least, the great question between Southern and Northern England, between the West-Saxon and the Dane. It would be true, though it might sound paradoxical, to say that the Nonnan Conquest. mgdfi-England^axon. The harrying of Northumberland fimsKed the work whic¥^cgberEtliad begun, and which the West-Saxon conquerors of the tenth century, Eadward and * 1 shall speak more fully of this in the next Chapter. * See vol. iv. p. 47a. STRENGTHENING OF NATIONAL UNITY, 43 ^thelstan and Eadmund, had carried on. William, the descendant of Scandinavian sea-kings, the destroyer of the last of West-Saxon lieroes, showed himself as the true successor of the West-Saxon dynasty which he claimed to represent When the King wore his crown at Winchester, Gloucester, and Westminster, it was emphati- cally the crown of Cerdic, of Ceawlin, and of -Alfred that he wore.^ From his day no man doubted that England was a realm which none could tear asunder. And from his day no man doubted where the headship of that realm lay, and that York was doomed to bow to Winchester and London. It is only quite lately that the balance has been in some measure restored. The great commercial and political developement of modem days has given back to Northern England an importance which it had not held since the Bretwaldas of the seventh century and the Danish Kings and Earls of the tenth. In future Chapters of this volume it will be my business to trace out the lasting effects of William's Conquest on our laws and con- stitution, our social and religious history, our language and our archi- tecture. But, besides the effect which William's Conquest had on all these things, we must remember that William founded a dynasty. And as every later King has sprung of William's blood, that dynasty in one sense has gone on to our own time. Still there is one period of our history which is emphatically the time of the rule of William's immediate family. It is in strictness the Norman period of English history, the time when we were ruled by Kings who were strictly Norman by birth, descent, or adoption. It was a time when the rule of the King of the English was not wholly insular, as it had been before and as it was to be again, and when it was not as yet that wide dominion, insular and continental, of which England and Normandy formed but two parts out of many. It was a time when England and Normandy formed the whole dominion of their common King and Duke, and when, though his diplomacy might reach much further, his warfare was mainly waged either to keep rivals out of his own dominions, or to preserve the doubtful allegiance of the border-lands of Scotland, Wales, and Maine. And, more than this, it was during this period that the immediate results of the Con- quest, as distinguished from its more far-reaching results in after times, were firmly established. It was during this time that the Nor- man conquerors and settlers took firm root on English soil, and * Wniiam of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. austnim quam ad aquilonem dtversati 309), af^er remarking on the difficulty of noscuntur." So Florence (1091) inci- undentandiDg the speech of the North of dentally assumes Wessex as the natural England, adds, **Quod propter viciniam dwelling-place of William Rufus; "Post barbararum gentium, et propter remotio- haec rex de Northyrabria per Merciam in ncm regum, quondam Anglorum modo West-Saxoniam rediit." There had been Normanoonim, contigit, qui magis ad no special mention of Wessex before. 44 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. learned to feel that England, and not Normandy, was their real home. It was during this time that the few direct chants which the Con- quest wrought in our political and social institutions were fully estab- lished. This period takes in the reigns of the three Kings who immediately followed William. Of these the first two were William's own sons, the second of them was his English- bom son. The third, Stephen of Blois, the son of William*s daughter, was not in strictness a member of William's house. But he had practically become one of William's house by adoption. Brought up at the court of his uncle, bound to him by the close and endearing tie of a sister's son, carefully seeking the good will of the inhabitants of Eng- land of both races, Stephen was in truth as much Norman, as nnidi English, as if he had come of the male line of the Conqueror. He was certainly more Norman, more English, than the Kings ^o came immediately after him. The difficulty is that it was only for a few years that Stephen can be said to have reigned at all ; the greater part of his nominal reign must be looked upon as a time of an- archy, parting off the period represented by Henry the First from the period which begins with Henry the Second. With the accession of the Angevin dynasty a new state of things begins. England and Normandy were for a short time merely members of a vast do- minion which seemed likely to grow into a common kingdom of Gaul and Britain. The final result of this state of things was that England and Normandy parted asunder, that Normandy became part of the French kingdom, while England again became the island Em- pire, holding for some ages a greater or less part of Gaul as a de- pendency of England beyond the sea. Within the land the dominion of strangers — strangers often no less to Normandy than to England- had the effect of making all the natives of England, of whatever blood or speech, feel and act as countrymen. The time during which the effects of the Norman Conquest may be looked upon as visibly working thus divides itself into two easily marked periods. The first takes in the reigns of William Rufus, Henry the First, and Stephen, so far as we can say that there was any reign of Stephen at all The second period takes in the reigns of the Angevin Kings, from the accession of Henry the Second till England once m(ve thoroughly became England under Edward the First The former of these periods I purpose to deal with in the present Chapter, in the form of a consecutive narrative. But it will not be a narrative entering into the same detail as that in which I have told the reigns of Eadward, Harold, and William. It will be one that will deal specially with those events which illustrate the effects of the Conquest, and the relations of Normans and Englishmen to one another. It will answer to the narrative of the reigns of the Danish Kings which I gave in my first volume. The second period will, from the point of CHARACTER OF THE NORMAN REIGNS. 45 view of this History, need nothing beyond a mere sketch, such as the opening Chapter of my story, in which I pass hghtly over the five centuries of English history between Hengest and Eadgar. And as, between those two Chapters, I placed what I had to say for my pre- sent purpose about the earliest institutions of England, so, between my slight narrative of the Norman reigns after William and my shghter sketch of the Angevin Kings down to Edward, I place the Chapters which are designed to treat, in the form of disquisition rather than of narrative, of the work that was going on between the Conquest of William and the accession of Henry, the effects in short of the Norman Conquest. I go on then now to take up the thread of my narrative where I dropped it, on the day when the second William left the death-bed of the first to take possession of the Crown of the conquered island. § 1. Reign of William Ru/us, 1087 — iioo. In the two periods of English history with which I have to deal in the present volume, a remarkable analogy may be seen between the successive stages of each. Each dynasty, Norman and Angevin, begins with a mighty founder. If the Conqueror stands alone, or is approached among his own descendants by the great Edward only, a place next after theirs among the later rulers of England may safely be given to Henry of Anjou. William and Henry each began a great work, and each handed on his work to his successor before the final effects of his work had as yet had time fully to show themselves. There is thus an analogy between the position of the second King of each djmasty, between William the Red and Richard the Lion- Hearted. There is in truth a good deal of likeness between the two men. In each case a man of great natural gifts, of strongly- marked character, but whose powers are .not directed to any one great and statesman-like object, follows a statesman of the highest order. In both reigns England itself seems to fall out of sight, as compared with schemes of continental policy, continental enterprise, and continental conquest To the long and important reign of Henry the First there is nothing which exacdy answers in the Angevin period. In some points it is a continuation of the reign of Rufus ; in other points it has a character wholly its own. But the anarchy of Stephen's time answers to the longer anarchy of John and Henry the Third. Only it marks the silent advance which had been made between the two periods that the earlier anarchy sprang out of a struggle between two competitors for the Crown, while the later anarchy sprang out of a struggle between the Crown and the nation. At last, in both cases alike, light comes out of darkness and order out of chaos. In the one the power of the Crown is again restored by the statesmanship of 46 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. the great Henry ; in the other the power of the Assemblj of the nation is again restored in a new form by the statesmanship of tiie greater Edward. I have said that the reigns both of William Rufiis and of Richard the Lion-Hearted have a spedaUy un-English looL But, if we look below the surface, we shall see that this is fiur more true of the reign of Richard than of the reign of Rufus. Richard has strangely be- come a national hero, because his crusading ex[>loits were held to shed glory on the land in which he chanced to be bom and (rom which he drew his highest dtle. Thus the reign of Richard was really more un-English than it seems in popular belief But the reign of William Rufus was really less un-English than it seems at first sight. Out- wardly indeed it was a reign specially un-English, more so than the reign which went before it or the reign which foUowed it. It was indeed to English loyalty and valour that W^illiam Rufus owed his throne ; yet, after his first delusive appeal to English lojralty, there was nothing in his days which at all answers to the studied Engli^ revival which marked the reign of his English-bom brother. The old race of Englishmen was dying out ; the new race of Englishmen had hardly as yet begun to show itself. Still, if William Rufus utterly belied his claim to the ancient tide of King of the English, few Kings were better entitled to the new title which was just beginning to creq) in, the tide of King of England. His personal policy was indeed mainly continental ; his chief object throughout his reign was to win and enlarge a dominion on the mainland. But he carried on his continental policy in something more than the local spirit of a mere Norman Duke. His own age looked on him as one who threatened the kingdom of France in the character of a King of England. Richard altogether neglected his island kingdom, and gave up that fuller superiority which his father had won over his Scottish vassal William, on the other hand, never neglected to consolidate and to extend his authority in the island realm, the possession of which gave him such increased strength for his continental undertakings. In no reign between those of the two great Ed^-ards are the relations of the Imperial Crown to its Welsh and Scottish dependencies of greater importance than they are in the reign of the second Norman King. And William Rufus is one of the few Kings since the days of the West-Saxon conquerors who, like Harold and Edward the First, enlarged the actual English kingdom by the incorporation of lands which had hitherto stood in a relation of merely extemal vassalage. To have annexed Normandy and Maine, to have made his over-lord at Paris tremble lest his whole realm should share the same fate — these things were but momentary triumphs. But the conquest of South Wales, the incorporation of Cumberland, the restoration of Carlisle as a border city and fortress, all these were lasting additions CHARACTER OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 47 to the strength of the English kingdom. They mark the reign of William Rnfus as a time when, if Englishmen were bowed down under a cruel yoke, England at least was mighty mider a King who knew how to use her might. With the personal character of William Rufus we are less con- cerned than with the political character of his reign. But the cha- racter of the man was one which had no small effect on the character of his reign. No man ever had a more distinct personality of his own. The impression which he made on the minds of his contem- poraries is borne witness to by a store of personal anecdotes larger perhaps than is to be found of any King before or after him. We can see the Red King,^ in his figure a caricature of his father, short in stature, with projecting stomach, ruddy face, and restless eye. We can hear him, in his merriment or in his anger, casting about his impious jests and shameless mockery of his own crimes, or else in his fierce wrath stammering out his defiance of God and man. His bodily strength, his love of the chase, his military skill and daring, we may add his real gifls as a ruler whenever he chose to put them forth, all come from his father. But all that ennobles the character of the elder William is lacking in the younger. William the Great ever kept a real feeling of religion, a real respect for law, however easy he might find it to turn law and religion to his own ends. But William the Red knew no law but his own will. Instead of the austere per- sonal virtues of the Conqueror, William Rufus was given up to every kind of riotous living, even to forms of vice which are sheltered by their own foulness.* Instead of the more than ceremonial religion of his father, he was a mocker and a blasphemer, not so much, it would seem, a speculative unbeliever as one who took a strange pleasure in dealing with his Maker as with a personal enemy.' The man who gathered together Jewish Rabbis and Christian Bishops, and offered to embrace the creed of the best disputants,^ the man who undertook to convert back again the Hebrew youth who had forsaken the Syna- gogue for the Church," may not have intellectually cast aside the faith which he never cast aside formally, but he had bidden farewell to the * He w «• Rex Rofus," " Li rcis Ros," 680 A, 68a B, 763 C, 781 C, D. The in a marked way, the nickname being passages must be compared together for systematically used, almost as if it were their fiiU force to be taken in. Cf. also a real name. See Will. Malms, iy. 306 ; Stubbs, Itinerarium, zxi. Cf. Giraldus, Ord. Vit. 673 D, 68j B; Wacc, 14499- ^»^ Galfiridi, ii. 19 (vol. iv. p. 423, 14503- Brewer). ' On this matter I can do no more than ' I refer to the words put into his refer to the words of Saint Ansekn in mouth by Eadmer, Hist. No?. 54. Cf. 47. Eadmer, Hist Nov. 34, to the remarkable * Will. Malms, iv. 317. passages in William of Malmesbury, iv. ' Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 46, 47. These 314, 316 (especially the various readings passages have a further importance as in Sir T. D. Hardy's note), v. 393, 41a, connected with the appearance of Jews and to several placet in Ordeiic, 67a B, in England. See Appendix (^ 48 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. commonest decencies of his time and office. Strange to saj, cbe King who surpassed all his fellows in vice and bla^hemy was never cut off from the communion of the Church. And oocasionaJ ap^ pearances at ecclesiastical ceremonies, occasional grants to eocka- asiical foundations, show that the open blasphemer had still not separated himself by any formal act from the fellowship of Christiu men. Yet it is clear that in the character of William Rufiis tfaere was i side which, at any rate in his own age, was not wholly repulsive. He had at least the virtues of a son. Dutiful in all things as loi^ as bs father hved,^ he cherished his memory with all rev-erence wben he was gone. This feeling comes out in more than one shape. The few churches towards which Rufus appears, not as a spoiler but as a bene^ factor, are those which owed their foundation to his father.* And in his wars he makes it a kind of point of honour to keep or win what- ever had been a possession of his father.' But the phrase which I have just used, the fact that we can speak of a point of honoor, opens to us that side of the Red King's character which is ia every way the most instructive. William Rufus, like Richard the Lion -Hearted, is one of the heroes of chivalry. His reign indeed marks a great developement, a developement which we can hanfir doubt that his personal character gready helped, of all those ideas which, for want of a better name, we may speak of as chivalrous. For William Rufus the law of God and the law of right were words which had no meaning; but he fully understood and obeyed the law of honour. The virtues of the Christian man, the virtoes of the ruler ruling according to law, the virtues of the subject obejing according to law, were of no account in his eyes. But the \irtues of die knight, the gentleman, and the soldier he could bodi honour in others and practise in his own person. Like other chivalrous Kings, he thought but lightly of the coronation oath which bound him to his people, of the promises which he made them in his own time of need, or of the treaties by whidi he botmd himself to other princes.^ He did not scruple to purchase the help of men who were bound by every tie of allegiance to the cause of his enemies; but his engagements in actual wv time, the engagements which boimd him personally as a soldier and a knight, were always strictly kept As the King sworn to do * See rol. IT. p. 481. » The chief of these were Battle Abbey and Saint Stephen's at Caen, the founda- tions of bis father. The Waltham writer (De Inrentione, 32) raises a wail over William's robbeiics from Wahhiun to enrich Caen. » Ord. Wx. 769 B, C. * See the complaints of die Eogfish Chronicler of Rufus' breftch of his pronuses to his subjects in 10S8 and of his breach of the treaty with Robert in 1091. The phrase is nearly the same in both < PERSONAL CHARACTER OF RUFUS. 49 justice and mercy, he did not shrink from visiting innocent men with barbarous punishments/ but when he acted as the knight in arms, the life and limb of the prisoner of war was safe in his hands, and, when he granted a truce to a besieged place, his word remained unbroken.' What he practised himself he looked for from others. He refused to hearken to the suggestion that knights to whom he had granted their freedom on parole might possibly betray the faith which they had plighted.' We hear much of his mag^nimit}' and his libenJity ; ^ but his magnanimity ' has little in common with any true greatness of soul. It was rather an overbearing personal arrogance,' which made him too proud to hurt those whom he deemed personally beneath him, and which thus often led him into acts which had at least the outward look of generosity.' The liberality of Rufus gathered around him the choicest soldiers of all lands ; but the means for this bounty was fomid in sacrilege and oppression, in keeping churches void of pastors and in wringing tax uf)on tax from every class of his subjects.' His hand was heavy on the robber and on the murderer, save when they could either purchase their safety by a bribe,* or when they belonged to his own personal following. When we read of the court of Rufus, of the effeminate dress and manners and the base vices of the young nobles who surrounded him,*** and yet when we remember that these same men were the first in every feat of arms in the battle or the siege, we seem to be carried on over a space of five hundred years. We seem to have suddenly leaped fix>m the grave and decorous court of the Conqueror to the presence of the minions of the last Valois. The man so highly gifted, but whose gifts were thus fearfully abused, obtained without difficulty the Crown which his father's d3ring voice had bequeathed to him. He was accepted joyfully by the English, and, at least without any open opposition, by ^ Normans in England. A change of masters is commonly ' Take for instance the punishinent of WUGam of Ea and his companions in 1096. * See the story of the siege of Cb&teao- cor-Loir. Ord. Vit. 775 C, D. » Ord. Vit. 77a D. **Abtit a me nt credam quod probus miles riolet fidcm * See the storj in Wilfiam of Mahnes- * The meaning of the word **magiia- nimitas'* in the language of the time if iUustratcd by the words of Soger in hit Life of Lewis the Fat (c 19), where he cafls a certain Count Odo ** tmnnltnosus, VOL. y. mira magnatumilatis, capat scelcratomm.** • Will. Neub. i. 2. •• Homo typo im- manissimas soperbisB tnrgidns." ^ See in Will. Mahns. if. 3J0; Ord. Vit. 773 C; Wace, 15 100 et seq. ; Pal- graye, i?. 640. • S e Will. Mahns. ir. 314, 333 ; Ord. \nt. 680 A, 763 C. Cf. Eadmer. Hist. Nor. 94; Chron. Petrib. iioo. • Cf. Ord. Vit. 669 A, 680 A, with Win. Malms, ir. 314; Eadmer, Hist. Nor. 94. "SeeWiU. Mahns. ir. 314; Ord. Vit. 68a. so THE XCRMAX KIXGS IX EXGLAXD. accr; Ciic'e u> ^d Vets : die reign of a tnem Kmg is ahrajs fertit i£ l:^pe^ 2r.i ::::nises ; and dbe worst feamres of the cfaaiiacter of Rufos Lii li > r: \l3A bo: Hcile oppornmitr of shoving themseheL' Tl-ere vi^ ls iviiLable Enz^iah compc&ior; the Engtish-bom Henr V15 r:: 2: hj^.d ; and. as a niler chonzfa not as a man, WHfian vas a: all 'imes :o be pneferred co Robert. The choke of Wifiai 100 vouid again s^parare Enzlind and Xonnandr, and socfa a separation, even under die son oc her Conqueror, mighc seem like cfae be^nning of a new day of freeiotn for England. The new King was crowned (September 26. 10^71 bv the primate Lanfranc,*and he began to reign widiou: a hand or a voice being raised against hiin. Bie, af^r rhe Easter of the next vear. William learned that it was onhr the English part of his subjects who had accepted him in good faith. A revol: broke out which was shared in br the diief men of Norman birdi throughout England. At its head was Bidiop Odo of Bayeux. who. released from his prison and lestorcd to hs earldom rf Ken:, was dissadsfied at finding that the chief place in the councils of the new King was held, not by himself^ bat by fais brother prelate William of Durham.' Odo set fordi the advantages which the Norman seiders in EnsrLmd would find by still haiiog one prince to reign over bo:h England and Normandy. He toU them how much better it suited their interests to be ruled by die careless Robert than by the s:em and acdve William. The chief Normans in England. Ohio's own brother Roben of CorawalL Eari Roger of Montgomery and his fierce son Robert of Belesme^ Hg^ the Bigod and Hugh of Grantmesnil, the younger Coom Elustace of Boulogne, Bishop Gee drey of Coutances and his nephew Roben of Mowbray, all rose in rebellion to transfer the Crown of FnglaTiJ frr>m WiUiam to his brother the Duke of the Normans.* And, in the South at least, men believed, to their wonder and horror, tlot the Bishop of Durham himself joined in the revolt, a deed which the English Chronicler does not scruple to liken to the deed of Jtidas. At Durham however men looked on William of Saint Carllef as an innocent \ictim of the wrong-doing of his royal name- sake.* On the other hand, Lanfranc and the other Bishops, a few Norman nobles, among them Earl Hugh of Chester and \\llliam 15. 14. ^lUum of 312 i «ioobtIcss CJU^ > See Euimcr, MalnMsbvrj ut. * Chroo. Petrib. lo-?; ; Flor. Wtg. 10^7 ; WilL Maimi. ir. jcs : Ord. Vit. 663 C * Win. Malms, ir. 306. Oa Winiam of Saint Canlet. »*e roL it. p. 459. * Wilfiam of Ncwborgh (i. 2) speaks atut laopta^e of a soimewLat later time. when he sin, '^Qmbttsdani Roberto propensiorcffl. tam«pum ^ karrnii et peqxram exfajeredato, ^voccm pnestantiboft.** * The accocmts ia the Cfannde, fl^ rence. ar>«i Wilbam of MafancdMinr sboili be compared with the toag Dnrkam vcnin in the MooMticoa, L 244. Ct. Palgxavc, IT. 31. 3*- REVOLT OF THE NORMANS. 51 of Warren, and the great mass of the English people, remained faithful to the new King. The rebels strengthened their castles; each man in his own district harried the land, especially the domains of the King and the Archbishop ; and they sent to Duke Robert, prajring him to send help and to come himself to take the Crown to w^hich the conmion voice of the Normans in England had called him. In this danger the son of the Conqueror owed his Crown to the zeal and >^our of the conquered. Twice in the course of the war did Rufus put forth written proclamations, calling the sons of the soil to his standard, and lavishing all the promises which Kings are wont to lavish at moments when the help of the people is needful to them. The days of King Eadward were to come back ; all wrong was to be undone; no more unrighteous taxes were to be raised; each man was again, as in the days of Cnut, to have his free right of hunting on his o^n land.* By the second proclamation the shameful name of m'thing was to be the doom of every man, French or English, who failed to obey the summons of his lord the King.' The English pressed around him ; they promised, and they gave him, their faithful service. Fortresses held by Nor- man garrisons were taken; fortresses besieged by Normans were defended ; a new Norman invasion was beaten back from the South- Saxon shore by King William at the head of his faithful English. The fierce Robert of Mowbray yras driven from their walls by the burghers of Dchester.' The Norman lords of the Welsh march, Roger of Lacy, Bernard of Newmarch, Ralph of Mortimer — some add the greater Roger himself — at the head of a host of Normans, Englishmen, and Britons, were overthrown before the walls of Worcester, smitten, as men then deemed, by the curse of the English Bishop who defended the King's cause within the dty.* Qt ipsvin, qami de rohmtate patris in regem crearerant, sibi, uoquam caput et regera, tnerentur, promittens eis quod mcliornn legem quaxn sibi rellent cligere concederet eis imposterum et scripturm finnarct.*' ' The tiege of Ildiestcr — Girdceaitn — strange pUce it now seems for a siege^ is described only by Florence, 1088. * For the siege of Worcester, see the Chronicle, 1088; WilL Malms. Gest. I^«g* >▼• 30^ : <^t. Foot. 385. It is told moch more fbllj by Florence, in whose acocMBt of the deeds •of kis own Bishop and of hit own feOow-dtiiens the small beginnings of a legcndaiy element may be seen creeping in. ' On these promises see Stubbs, Con- ftitntional History, i. 396. ' I hare mentioned this nithing pro> cbmatioo in rol. ii. p. 67, so far as it ilJnstratcd the use of the word mi^Sing, It comes oat in the Chronicle in 1088, and in William of Malmesbory, ir. 306. Bat it is the English Chronicler alone who brings out the fact that it was addressed to all inhabitants of the land alike, both Frendi and English ; ** Se cyng . . . sende da eall Englalande. and bead V^ «lc man ^ were nnniffing sceolde cnman to bsm, Frendsce, Englisce, of porte and of nppdande.** Walter of Hemingborgh (i, 31) giTcs the appeal a specially popular turn; "ConTOcarit Anglos, et ostendit «is seditsonem Nocmannomm, rogarhque K 3 5 a THR NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. But the main stress of the var fell on the Kentish and Soath- Saxon lands. Here Odo held the castle of Rochester against the King; here Robert of Moitain held the castle which had arisen within a corner of the Roman walls of Anderida. First at Pcven- sey, then at Rochester, had the Bishop of Bayeux to surrender to the English host, and, at iiis second surrender, he had to mardi out amid the jeers and curses of the victorious army, who caUed on their King for halters to hang the traitor.* But more striking still was the turning about of things during the earlier siege of Pevensey. Duke Robert at last sent a fleet to help in an enter- prise which he affected to deem too easy to need his personal presence. On the spot where the Norman followers of the first William had first landed on the soil of England, the English followers of the second William struck down or drove back into the sea the new Norman invaders of England.' Odo and many of his fellow rclwls had to leave England with the loss of their English lands and honours. Bishop William of Durham, after a trial in the King's Court which reads like a forestalling of the struggles of Anselm and Thomas, surrendered his castle and went beyond sea.^ By the help of the English whom he had called to his standard, Wilham King of the English was now safe upon his throne. This rebellion and its suppression are among the most striking events of the time. Nothing since the coronation of the Conqueror brings out the action of the English people in so strong a light One thing almost alone we wish to know, namely how far the vigorous action on the part of the English to which all our authorities b^ witness ^-as a common action throughout the whole land. Wc should gladly know how far distant parts of the kingdom agreed in obe}ing Uie summons which bade ever}' man who was not a niihing to hasten to the King's standard. We would gladly know whether Mercian or Northumbrian contingents showed themselves before Pevensey and Rochester, or whether they stayed to do what they might for the defence of other parts of the kingdom. One thing at least is certain ; the son and successor of the Conqueror kept his Crown through the help of English loyalty and English valour, when the greater part of the Norman lords and their Norman followers had turned against him. The campaign of 1088 was as much a war of Englishmen against Normans as the campaign of 1066 ; and it was the last campaign of Englishmen against Normans. From henceforth we have civil wars, in which men of either race * This K^rie it riridiy descrll>ed by further details by WUiiim of Malmesbnrj, Orderic. 068, 6$o ; Palgrarc, iv. 45. who talks about'** nos ri/* i?. 306. ' This national exploit it told wiUi great ' See above, p. 50. gke by tbc Cbrofjicler, and with some THE REBELLION PUT DOWN BY THE ENGLISH. 53 -might be arrayed on either side ; but we never again see an armed struggle between the two races. We do not again hear an appeal to Englishmen, as Englishmen, to do battle against the Norman. The next time that Englishmen are called on to do battle against strangers on their own soil, the meanings of words have changed. The descendants of the Norman settlers have now become English- men, and they join along with other Englishmen in withstanding new crowds of adventurers from lands which they have now learned to look upon as foreign. The campaign of Rochester and Pevensey, waged in the cause and at the bidding of our second Norman King, was in truth the last effort of the old and undefiled Teutonic England. As compared with every other effort since the great overthrow on Senlac, it shows, as everything else in these ages shows, that all that Englishmen needed was a leader. In William Rufus, strange as it soimds to say it, they had found a leader such as they had never found since the fall of Harold, a leader than whom, simply as a military leader, no better could be found. Throughout this cam- paign, looking at it simply as a campaign, a worthy chief was commanding worAy followers. That William Rufus was a great captain there is no room to doubt from the unanimous witness of the writers of his time. He was a King too, the head of the estab- lished government of the land, and, in fighting for him, men had all the advantages on their side which they had lacked when they were fighting against his father at Exeter and Ely.* Englishmen had now again a King of their own making, a King who, stranger as he was, owed his Crown to them, a King who, if he could not be as ^fred or as Harold, might at least be as Cnut. That so it was not, that the loyalty and valour of Englishmen were utterly thrown away, was not the fault of the new King's position, it was not the fault of his intellectual or his military capacity ; it was the inherent fault of his moral nature. It was not in him to be as Cnut ; it was not in him to be even as his own father. The promises which he made to win English support were forgotten as soon as EngUsh support was no longer needed. In the sad and pithy words of the Chronicler, "It stood no while." It is not clear that Rufus deliberately oppressed Englishmen as Englishmen, more than he oppressed other classes of his subjects. His reign is rather a reign of general wrong- doing towards men of all ranks and races, the mercenary soldier, of whatever race, alone excepted. But, under the circumstances of the time, the oppression of William could not fail to press most heavily on men of English birth, and the agents of his misdeeds could not fail to be mainly chosen from among the ranks of strangers. In the year after the rebellion was put down, William was released * Sec Tol. IT. p. a. 54 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. from another check upon his actions bj the death of the Primilf Lanfranc (May 24, 1089). It is said that differences bad abeadr begun to spring up between him and the King.^ In the next jrear ve come to the beginning of a series of events which brougfat Eogiaod into relations \^ith the mainland of Europe which were whoUf onlike any in which the island kingdom had found itself before. A King of England — for if Rufus had forfeited his right to be looked on as Kin; of the people, he was in the fullest sense King of the land — uses ifae strength, and, above all, the wealth, of England to win for himself a continental dominion. The great object of Rufiis was to win for him- self his father's duchy, and to add to it once more his father^s conquest of Maine. In his later years his dreams of conquest seem to have stretched more widely still He is said to ha^-e bargained for the possession of Aquitaine,' a possession which would have enabled the lord of Normandy and Maine to hem in the hostile land of Anjoa 00 both sides. It is even said that he dreamed of displacing his ow- lord on the throne of Paris, and of thus uniting all Gaul and Britun into one Empire.' Such schemes may not have been too wild for i man who was at once so puffed up with pride and so conscious of real strength as the Red King. But tiie more distant and daring parts of his schemes never got beyond the stage of dreams. The dealings of Rufus with Aquitaine never got beyond an alliance with its Duke. His schemes for the conquest of France never got beyond desuhorr border warfare. But Normandy and Maine he did win by the com- bined strength of gold and steel, and he died in full, though only recent, possession both of his fathers inheritance and of his father's greatest continental conquest A more scrupulous prince than William Rufus might have held that the help which Robert had given to the rebels in England formed a just casus belli against him. And Normandy was just now in a sute which, to a prince like William Rufus. must have seemed absolutely to invite invasion. Things had come about as William the Great had foretold on his death-bed. As soon as his controlling hand was gone. Normandy fell back into the state of anarchy into which it had fallen in the days of his childhood. Under Robert the land was again given up to disorders of ever>' kind, among which the pri\'ate wars of the great nobles hold the first place.* The treasures of the Conqoeror > See Eadmer, 14. ' Soger. Wx, Lod. I ; DncfacsDe, hr. 383. ' The deal ngs of William Rafos with ** Dicebatur equidem Tulgo regent flhtm William of Aqo:uine come imt in Orderic, saperhum et impetnosum aspirarc ad r^ 780 B, C. His object is said to be ** ot num Francomm.*^ osqae ad Garumnam florium imperii soi * These prirate wan fill a luger spaKC fioes dilitaret." It most be remeaibered in the history of Orderic than the wan that the Aqoitania of these times tay north between William and Robert. Sec for of the Garonne, while the Aqoitania of instance 6S4-693, in the middle of which Osar lay sooth. ^691 A, B) comes the moral oommcnt; SC/CCESSES OF RUFUS AND NORMANDY, 55 were quickly squandered by his weak and prodigal son, and Robert was soon glad to make over to his youngest brother Henry the whole western part of the Duchy. With three thousand pounds out of the five which his father had left him/ the iEtheling bought the C6tentin and the Avranchin. The relations between the three brothers were shifting ;* Henry was deprived of his dominions, and was even impri- soned by Robert ; but he was again invested with his fief, and, at the time when war broke out between William and Robert, Henry was not only in possession of his principality, but was acting vigorously on behalf of Robert. Of WUliam's two weapons, the wealth of England and the arms of the mercenaries whom that wealth enabled him to hire, he began his work with the less dangerous. William's schemes were almost carried out for him before he had himself crossed the sea, and before a blow had been struck in his cause. A crowd of nobles on the eastern side of Normandy, won by his gifts and pro- mises, received his garrisons into their casdes (1090), and acknow- ledged him as their lord for their lands in Normandy. It is plain that some of the arguments by which men in England had been led to revolt against William on behalf of Robert could now be turned the other i^*ay. So far as it was for their interest to have one lord rather than two, that object could now be gained only by putting William in possession of Normandy; there was not the faintest chance of putting Robert in possession of England. Among those who in this way came over to the cause of William, we find the names, already so familiar to us, of Ralph of Mortemer, Ralph of Toesny, the aged Walter Giffard. and the King's cousin Stephen, lord alike of Holdemess and of Aiunale.' Stephen's castle o( Aumale was the first fortress on actual Norman ground to pass into the allegiance of William. But his agents had already re- ceived the surrender of the castle of Saint Valery, in the Ponthevin fief of Normandy.* William thus, in his absence, began the conquest of Normandy from the spot from whence his father had set fordi in his own person to the conquest of England. Before long nearly all Normandy on the right bank of the Seine had come into the hands ** Ecce qaibas xmnnis superba profiigatnr of the Coteotin to Henry, lee Orderic, Nonnanma, qiue nimis olim victa giori- 665 C; Will. Malms, t. 393; Waoe, alntur AngUa, et natoralibos regni fiiiis 14500 et leqq. I bare mainly followed tmcidatis siTe fogatis. osarpabat eonim Orderic. possesciooes et impcria. Ecce massam ' WiD. Nenb. i. 1. ** Henricos frater diritiaram qnas aliis rapnit, eisqne pollens jonior, laodabilem pnefeiens iodolcm, durii ad snam pemiciem ins<4enter tmmiit, naoc et infidis fratribos militabat.** non ad dekclAmcntnm $*t scd potios ad ' Chroo. Petrib. 1060 ; Ord. Vit. 681 A. miserabiliter diftrahii." Ap- * Saint Valery is not mentioned by propriate scriptaral and classical tllustratioos Orderic, bat it comes nrst in the list in the foBov. Chronicle, which is followed by Florence ' For the different vexfions of the sak and William of Mahnesbary (ir. 307). 56 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. of Rufus. One district alone remained faithful. Helias of Saint Saen, who had married a daughter who had been bom to Robert in his wanderings, defended the casde of Arques, the scene of one of the Conqueror's earlier exploits,* and the whole land of Canz, with a desperate fidelity which he went on to show in after years both to Robert and to his son. At last the movement reached the capital. The citizens of Rouen, if they had not actually thought of founding a commune like the citizens of Le Mans, were at l^st a rich and powerful body, under a demagogue or tyrant — for he had wealth to hire mercenaries of his own— Conan by name.' The burghers now embraced the cause of William. They deemed perhaps that the more distant master would be the safer, and we must re- member too that the state of lawlessness which might have charms in the eyes of turbulent nobles could have none in the eyes of the citizens of a great city. Rouen then rose for the Red King. Henry came to the rescue of the feeble Duke ; a fight took place within the city ; the citizens, vanquished within their own walls, were handed over to the mercies of the nobles on Robert's side, and Conan himself was hurled by the hands of Henry from the highest tower of the casde of Rouen, after a manner which reminds us of the fate of Eadric* But all this comparatively petty strife, strife which seems hardly to touch the interests of England, leads us to another stage in our national history — it might not be too much to say, to another stage in the history of Europe. It is not clear whether it was before or after the suppression of the sedition at Rouen that the successes of William's arms drove his brother to a step the like of which had not been heard of in Normandy since the early days of the reign of their father. It is now that we come to the first stage of the long warfare between England and France. We cannot give that name to the intervention of English Kings in earlier times to defend the rights of the Karling at Laon against his turbulent vassal at Paris. Nor can we give that name to the warfare which a Duke of the Normans, whom his sword had also made King of the English, waged against his lord at Paris for the possession of the border- land of Normandy and France. We have reached another state of things when we see, for the first time, Paris and Rouen leagued together against Winchester. Duke Robert, pressed by his brother's arms, craved his lord the King of the French to come to his help. As Henry came to help the elder William at Val-^s-dunes, so Philip came with a great host to help Robert against the younger William before the walls of some castle whose name is not told us, but within * Sec vol. iii. p. 85. ' He is thrown " ex propugnaculo*' * The story of Conan is told by Orderic according to William of Malmesbury, (689, 690) and by William of Malmesbury *' per fincstrem terns " according to Or* (v. 393). dcric. Cf. vol. i. p. 488. TREATY BETWEEN THE BROTHERS, S7 which the King of England's men were. The fortress was delivered by the arms which the Red King so well knew how to use. What followed is best told in the pithy words of the Chronicler ; " The King William of England sent to Philip King of the French ; and he for his love or for his mickle treasure forlet so his man the Earl Robert and his land, and went again to France, and let it to them so be."^ Robert, forsaken by his over-lord, was thus left to his own re- sources, such as those resources were in a land where the private wars of his nobles never ceased for a moment, though two king- doms were thus stirred on behalf of the two competitors for the duchy. Early in the next year (1091) William crossed the sea, rather to take possession of his conquest than actually to push his arms any further. At the head of a host gathered, not only from Normandy and England, but from France, Britanny, and Flanders, he took up his head-quarters in the castle of Eu. Most of the nobles of Normandy flocked to welcome him; resistance on the part of Robert was hopeless; he was glad to save part of his dominions by the surrender of another part which he had no hope of winning l^ck. A treaty between the brothers was agreed on at Caen under the mediation of the King of the French.' By its terms William was to keep the casdes and towns wherfe he had been received, forming a territory which hemmed in the Norman capital both to the east and to the south.' On the other hand, William engaged to win back for Robert whatever possessions of their father were not by the treaty especially assigned to himself. This clause would take in, not only all the lands granted to Henry, but also the county of Maine, which, we shall soon see, was again in revolt. It was furdier stipulated that, on the death of either prince without lawful issue, the whole of his dominions should pass to his surviving brother. The partisans of William in Normandy were to suffer no harm, and those who had suffered banishment or confiscation for their share in the rebellion against William in England were to be restored. Odo was, either formally or practically, shut out from the benefit of the treaty. But William of Saint Carilef came back, to begin the rebuilding of the minster of Saint Cuthberht,* and to appear again, with all his old influence, as the chief adviser of the Red King and the chief op- ponent of the holy Anselm. The article in the treaty which regulated the succession to the ' Chron. Petrib. 1090. Compare the Chronicler alone mentions Cherbourg amusing description given by Wilh'am of (Kiaeresburh) among the places to be Malmesbnry, iv. 307. ceded, but in his mention of F^amp he ' Compare Orderic with the Continua- is confirmed by the Continuator of Wil- tor of William of Jumi^ges, Tiii. 3. Ham of Jumi^ges. * The terms are nowhere so dearly * See vol. iv. p. 459. stated as in the Chronide, 1091. The 58 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Crown is worth notice from a constitutional point of view on more grounds than one. The rights of the Witan of England, none the less legally valid because they were now practically exercised by men of Norman birth, were signed away by a clause which cut them off from their free right of choice on the death of the reigning King. That clause too specially shut out the one member of the reigning family who by the law of England had a claim to any special pre- ference at the hands of the electors.* It is hardly worth while lo discuss the ingratitude of Robert towards a brother who had saved his capital for him. It is enough to mark that at this time William and Robert were leagued against Henry. William's object yfz& to secure himself against all competitors for the Crown, whether in his own family or elsewhere. For, while he thus annulled berth the present and the future rights of his brother Henry, he also called on Robert to refuse all further shelter to the ^theling Eadgar, now his intimate friend and counsellor, and to confiscate the la^ds which he had granted to him in Normandy.' It is needless to say that all these provisions came to nothing. Both Henry and Eadgar appear at a later time in the full favour and confidence of Rufus, and it was to Henry and not to Robert that his Crown passed at his death. In short, this attempt to regulate the succession before the vacancy came to as little as every other earlier attempt of the same kind had come.' But the agreement none the less points to the growth of certain political ideas which were at this time struggling into being. Every agreement of this kind goes on the supposition that a kingdom is not an office to be bestowed by the nation according to its free choice, but a property to pass according to the will of the last holder, or according to the accidents of hereditary succession. The kingship of England, the highest office in the kingdom of England, was made the subject of bargain and treaty, as if it had been a house or a field. This doctrine, the doctrine which was in the end utterly to supplant the elder Teutonic notion of the kingly office, was implied in Cnut's promise to secure the Crown of England to the children of Emma.* It was implied in William's claim to succeed his kinsman Eadward, whether by virtue of a bequest or by virtue of nearness of kin. It was implied now in an agreement which took for granted that a possible son of Rufus would of right succeed to his Crown, and which, in failure of such son, guaranteed the succession of Robert, to the prejudice of the right of the nation to choose Henry, Eadgar, or whom it would. But we may mark further that a new consideration is brought in, which was unheard of when William the Bastard put forth his claim to the succession of his childless cousin. His sons, * See vol. jv. p. 537. • See vol. i. p. 323. ' Chron. Pctrib. 1091. * See vol. i. p. 376. GROWTH OF HEREDITARY CLAIMS, 59 both of them unmarried, display an milooked-for respect for legiti- mate birth, and they carefully shut out all pretenders who might be open to the same reproach as their own father. The practical object of the clause doubtless was to cut off all pretensions on the part of the sons who had been already bom to Robert.^ It would thus greatly increase William's chance of succeeding to Normandy. Still the provision none the less marks the growth of the new ideas. If the rule of men is to be dealt with as a property, which goes, like other property, according to some definite line of succession, that definite line of succession can hardly fail to be strictly con- fined to kinsmen of legitimate birth. No order of succession established beforehand can aflford to follow any standard except that which is implied in the rule, " Pater est quem nuptiae demon- strant" But when an office is bestowed by election, Dunois or Monmouth, Harold Harefoot or William the Great, may have as good a chance as their legitimate brothers or cousins. Their fitness for office may be greater, and in early times the sentiment which required kingly descent in a King would care little whether that descent was strictly according to the rules of either Canon or Civil Law. The strong opposition made to William the Bastard in Normandy, as compared with the slight opposition made to Harold Harefoot in England, marks a characteristic difference in feeling between the two countries. William was objected to directly on the ground of his illegitimate birth ; against Harold it was simply whispered that the supposed son of Cnut and -ffilfgifu was not really the son of either of his alleged parents.' That is to say, the whole range of ideas of which strictness as to legitimacy of birth forms part had made further advances in Normandy than it had in England. The present stipulation marks a further advance. It marks a further step in the process by which an office bestowed by the will of the people, restrained only by a feeling of reverence for one kingly stock, was changed into a possession to be dealt with like the rest of a man's lands and goods. The right and duty of being a judge in peace and a captain in war over the people of England was now bartered and bargained away, as if it had been nothing more precious than the soil covered by the castles of Eu and Aumale or than the castles by which their soil was covered. The immediate consequence of those provisions of the treaty by which the p)ossessions of Henry were to pass to his brothers was a war waged against him by the King and the Duke. A struggle so unequal was chiefly memorable for the siege which Henry stood (February — March, 109 1) in the great monastic fortress. Saint Michael in Peril of > See vol. iv. p. 438. • See vol. i. p. 376. 6o THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. the Sea.* And the siege itself is chiefly memorable for two familiar and characteristic anecdotes of the two brothers. It was now that Rufus, according to the well-known tale, took into his service the daring soldier who had mihorsed him.^ The tale is still better knomi how Robert allowed the besieged to supply themselves with water, how Rufus mocked at such untimely tenderness, and how Robcit asked whether he was to let his brother die of thirst' The upshot of the war was that Henry was driven forth landless, but that he was presently called on to accept the lordship of Domfront as its protector against the fierce Robert of Belesme.^ Domfront became a spedaSy cherished possession of Henry for the rest of his days, and, during the later transactions between William and Robert, we find its new lord in favour ^\nth Rufus, and enlarging his dominions, partly by his own efforts, partly by his brother's grant. For more than three years there was peace between WilUam and Robert, between England and Normandy. Presendy (1093) strife was again stirred up between the brothers, chiefly, we are told, through the plots of Count William of Eu.* We hear of a challenge sent by Robert to William,* and of another campaign of Wilham in Normandy (1094), in which his success was, to say the least, mnch less decided than in the former one. King Philip again appears as the ally of Robert, to be again persuaded by English gold to forsake his ally.^ But this was not till Philip and Robert had won some suc- cesses against the invader.^ The war lingered on, and the internal disturbances in Normandy went on alongside of it, till at last the strife of the brothers was ended by one of the great events in the worid's history, by the side of which the affairs of Normandy and England seem but as trifles. The voioe was heard which bade Christian men go forth and win the remission of their sins by the redemption of the Holy Land from its infidel oppressors. Urban spake at Qermont, and those who heard him said with one voice that " God willed it" * In the words of our own Chronicler, " This year eke to Easter was there very much stirring through all this nation and many other nations, through Urban that was hight Pope, though he nothing had of the settle at Rome. And went unnumbered folk with wives and children, to that that they would win upon the heathen nations/' ^'^ The ' Thif siege is described in WilL Gem. from Florence, 1 093. Tiii. 3; Ord. \\\,^/i A : Will, Malms, iv. • Chroo. Petrib. 1094. * ft. 308 ; Wacc (vhose whole account is foil of * lb. Hardly a word of this second i»> confusions and tntijfpositions), 14 70oetseq. vasion is to be found in Orderic, William * T}.:i s*ory is told by William of of Malroesbury, or Wace. MabjK^vury. ir. 309. * On the Cooocil of Clermoot, see Bcr- ' Wij;, Malms, ir. 310; Wace. 14798. nold, 1095, Pertr, r. 463; Orderic, 719 * See Will. Gem. riii. 3 ; Ord. Vit. 698 C ; and, far more fullr, William of MaJmes- C, 706 C. 788 B ; Wace, 14767. bury. ir. 345-348. * The action of William of Eu comes ^'^ Chroo. Petrib. 1096. The not voy THE FIRST CRUSADE. 6x only class of men who had no share in the great pilgrimage were the Kings of the West. The Emperor Henry was still the excommuni- cated enemy of the Church, and, wJiile Christendom was stirred at the voice of Urban, Wibert — Clement on the lips of his own followers — still held the strongest fortress and the two most revered sanctuaries of Rome.' The Caesar of the West was not likely to go and risk himself in the East, at the bidding of a Pontiff whom he disowned and who had stirred up his own son to rebellion against him.^ Philip of Paris had no mind for distant enterprises, and he too, like the Emperor, lay ♦imder the censures of the Church. His crime was a moral one, an adulterous marriage with the wife of Count Fulk of Anjou, the famous Rechin, the historian of his house.^ And William of England, who, for the craft of the soldier and the ruler, might have been a worthy leader of the hosts of Christendom, thought only of making his own profit out of an enthusiasm which, to his mocking soul, must have seemed like madness.* The days when Emperors and Kings led Crusades were yet to come ; the first and greatest of these armed pilgrimages marched, so far as it marched under any regular command at all, under the command of princes of the second order. A crowd of names famous in Norman and English history stand forth on the list of pilgrims. Highest among them was the Norman Duke himself. Robert, wearied out with the hopeless task of wielding the rod of his father in his native duchy, went forth to win himself a higher fame among the foremost in the champions of the Cross. Under him marched, not only his own continental subjects and neighbours, but such Englishmen as were stirred up to take a part in the distant enterprise.* And, stranger still, Englishmen serving in those distant lands under the banner of the Eastern Csesar, Englishmen who had fled from their own island to escape the yoke of his father, men who had fought at Dyrrhachion,^ perhaps even at Senlac and at Stamfordbridge, could, when they met so far from the scene of their old strife, hail the son of their Conqueror as their natural fiiend and ally.^ rrrerential description of Urban may be compared with the expressions quoted in f ol. IT. p. 396. > See Bernold, Pertz, r. 455. 457 ; Milman, iii. 215. ' Bemold«T.456,46i, 463. ' lb. 461. ♦ Will. Neub. i. a. " Dum in oriente a nottris proceribus fortiter atqae feliciter ageretor, idem Rex, propellentibns earn ad interitnm malis suis, condignum effrflenatx faperbix finem incurrit/* »Ord. Vit. 741 D. "Rodbertus Dux Normannonim cum xv. millibus Ceno* maonoruro, Andegavorum, Britonum, et Anglomm.*' • See vol. iv. p. 426. * This fact comes out in a very re- markable passage of Ralph of Caen, which I might not have lighted on if it had not been refened to by Lappenberg (Norman Kings, 282). The Crusaders are bffore Antioch, when Ralph tells us (Gesta Tan- credi, c. 58 ; ap. Muratori, v. 305), ** Ab- scesserant interea ex castris exosi taedio comites, Blesensis in Cyliciam, Loodiciam Normannus : Blesensis Tharsum ob re- medium egestatis, Normannus ad Anglos spe dominationis. Angli ea tempestate Laodiciam tenebant, missi ab Imperatore tutela, cujus fines vagus populabatur ex- 63 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. And Robert was presently joined on his march ^ by his bosom friend and counsellor, the last male of the house of Cerdic. £ad- gar now set forth on the longest of the many journeys which bote him from Hungary to England, from England to Apulia, and from Apulia to Scotland. And with him marched a follower of Engli^ birth, whose exploits and whose glorious end make us long to have a fuller knowledge of him. This was Robert the son of Godwine, whose father's name appears in the great Survey as a tenant of the iBtfaeling. We are told that Godwine himself saved the fame, perhaps the life, of his lord in a judicial combat in the days of the Red I^ng, and thtt his son Robert became renowned for his exploits under Eadgai's leadership in the wars of Scotland. He now followed the ^theling to the Crusade ; he saved the life of King Baldwin in a sally from beleaguered Rama, and, himself the captive of the infidels, rather than deny his Redeemer, he bore the doom of Eadmund and Sebastian in the market-place of Babylon.^ After such a hero as this, one almost blushes to record the names of other men famous in our stoiy who went on the same errand. Two such there were, foremost among the enemies of England, one of them her own apostate son. Ralph of Wader, traitor alike to England and to her Conqueror, went forth to do some deed in his later days which should wipe out the memory of his earlier treasons.' And in the same band set forth on his last journey the man who had been so long the scourge of England, now cast do^Ti from his Kentish earldom to the more peaceful duties of his bishoprick of Bayeux. Along with Eadgar and Robert, Odo the brother of the Conqueror set forth on the great march for Jeru- salem, to leave his bones at Palermo.^ Robert, with all his faults, was, as we have seen more than once, far from being incapable of generous feeling. We may be sure that few men in the crusading host went forth in fuller and truer singleness CTcitUft, iptam quoque cum violentia ir- tw\i\>ttt teiitantes. In bac formidine Angli aftsertoreni vocant praescriptum comi- tenit consilium fideie ac prudens. Fidei fuit 6deltni domino luo virum, cui se manciparent, adtciscere ; jugo Normanntco le ftubtraxcrant, denuo »ubdunt : hoc pru- deotijB ; gentis illiuft fidem ezperti, et muDcra ficile redcunt unde exierant." It fcems more 1 kely that these English at Laodikeia wire, at \\i\% account calls them, Warangiani in the Imperial service than that a fperjal Kiif^lith fleet had made iu way to Aniio'h, and that its crews had f/rtir. xhnutAi to Laodikeia. This is thr }ttj.*Mt$t of Raymond of Agiles (Oesta l)iri per Francos, 173); "Angli, Utidito ttontme oltioflis Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in eos qui terram natiritatis Domini et Apostolorum ejus indigne occupttveiant, ingressi mare Anglicnm, et circinata His^ pania, transfretantes per nure Oceannm, atque sic Mediterraneum mare sukantes, portum AntiochiflB atque civitatem Lao- diciae, antequam exercitus noster per tcftam iliac veniret, Uboriose obtinuemnt.** On the meaning of this passage, see Lappen- berg, Norman Kings, 284. ^ Robert set out in 1096; as Eadgar was engaged in Scotland in 1 09 7, he could not have been one of Robe's original followers. ' See Appendix R. Babylon of course is Bagdad. ' See vol. iv. p. 401. * See vol. ii. p. 139. NORMANDY PLEDGED TO RUFUS. 63 of purpose. To Rufus, to Henry also, the great movement which stirred all Christendom was but a means for promoting their own personal interests. Others might go to the ends of the earth to win &une in this world and salvation in the next ; they stayed at home to reap what profit they could out of their neighbours* madness. Duke Robert was ready to pledge to his brother (September, 1096) what was left of his duchy for the sum of ten thousand marks.^ The bargain was a good one for the Red King. Robert might never come back from his distant warfare ; if he did, the wit of Rufus would be able to devise some excuse for refusing to give up what he had actually in possession. By laying a heavy tax on his subjects in England of every rank, a tax which called forth the bitterest complaints, the King raised the money. The land was bowed down by his exactions, and, as often happened, hunger came in their wake.' But Rufus gained his purpose; in September he crossed the sea ; he made peace with his brother, he paid the money in full, and took possession of so much of the duchy as was not already in his hands. The acquisition of Normandy by William Rufus becomes an event of European importance when we look on it as the beginning of the long wars between England and France. Those wars were the natural consequence of the union of England and Normandy under a single sovereign. Between England and France, as long as a distinct and practically independent Normandy lay between them, there could be few grounds of quarrel. Winchester and Paris could have but small dealings with one another for good or for evil, as long as Rouen blocked the way fi-om the one to the other. The only dealings of any importance between the two countries had been when the Duke of Paris sent to seek for a King in England, and when the English King stepped in to defend the rights of the nephew whom he had allowed to cross the sea.^ Between France and Normandy there was a natural rivalry by land ; between England and Normandy there might easily be a rivalry by sea ; but between France and England, as political geography then stood, there could be no rivalry at all. But such a rivalry was sure to begin as soon as the duchy which lay between them was joined under one ruler with either the insular or the continental kingdom. At diflferent times the long rivalry took both these forms ; first the union of Normandy with England, then the union of Normandy with France, made France and England lasting enemies. As soon as the Duke of the Normans became King of the English, England was, without any interest of her own, from the force of mere dynastic causes, dragged into the long-standing quand > T. Wykei ( 1095) oddly enough makes * Chroa. Petrib. 1 096 ; cf. vol. iv. p. 474. him pledge the dochy to Utnry, ' See vol. l pp. 133, 136. 64 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. between the King of Paris and the mighty vassal who shot him out from the mouth of the Seine. During the Conqueror's reign over England, the quarrel with France became of importance only for one moment at its very end ; and the separation of England and Normandy at his death brought things back for a while to their former state. But, when England and Normandy were again united under Rufus, wars between France and the joint sovereign of England and Nor- mandy again began. The second reign of Robert once more made things as they were ; but, from the final conquest of the duchy hf Henry the First, wars between England and France fill the cliief place in our military history down to very late times indeed. And under Henry we see for the first time, what has been seen in so many later struggles down to the days of oiu* fathers, the banding together of continental and insujar Teutons, the Saxon of Germany, the Saxon of Britain, and in the first stage we may add, the Saxon of Normandy, against the common enemy of their common race. And, though these wars were waged for Norman interests under Norman Kings, they soon grew into national English wars. The border struggle which, in the days of Rufus, began between the new master of Normandy and the Parisian King, puts on in the records of the time, both French and Norman, the character of a war between France and England. We sometimes seem to be reading the language of the Hundred Years' War. Not only are the combatants constantly spoken of as French and English — an opposition of words which in England has such a different meaning — but the chief French historian of the time thinks it needful formally to lay down the doctrine that for the French to rule over the English and for the English to rule over the French is alike unjust.^ Nor is this merely that confused way of speaking by which all the subjects of a prince are often called by the national name of that part of them from whom their common sovereign draws his highest tide. From the point of view of a French writer tlie war really was an English war. The native English indeed, as a nation, could have no real interest in helping William Rufus to make conquests beyond sea. They could gain nothing by bringing other lands under the yoke of the foreign- op- pressor who had so cruelly belied the promises by which he had won their own loyal service. The French war seems to have drawn to itself but little notice in England ; the national writers, who have much to tell us about the wars in Normandy, something about the ^ Orderic (766) several times speaks of the Fat (Duchesne, iv. 483), speaks the forces of Rufus as '* Angli," and of throughout in the same way, and he puts Rufus himself as " Angh'cus Rex.** (To forth the formal position, " nee fas ncc be sure he had, yet more strangely, in naturale est. Francos Anglis, imo Angloi 655 D spoken of the Conqueror as " Angli- Francis, subjici.** gena Rex.") Suger, in his Life of Lewis fVAHS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE. fs^ of Maine, are silent as to the war on the French border. Yet, as war was certainly waged with English treasures/ we may be sure :, in the days of the second William no less than in the days of first,* the valour and the blood of English troops were spent in ning foreign dominion for their foreign masters. And when men once under arms, the military instinct so thoroughly absorbs ry other, that we may be sure that Englishmen fought for WilUam 'us with hardly less zeal before the fortresses of the Vexin than r had fought for him before Pevensey and Rochester. But, ides this, the war was, in French eyes, more truly an English war other grounds. The prince who came against France was no jer a Duke of the Normans who had conquered England, but a g of the English who had used the strength and wealth of jland partly to conquer, partly to purchase, Normandy. That he self and his chief followers were of Norman birth made little srence in such a view. That the object of Rufus was certainly to extend the power and the renown of England as England, but ply to bring under his own personal power whatever he could lay 1 of anywhere, mattered as little. Politically, the war was an English ; it was a war in which England as a power, though its resources ht be in the hands of strangers, began to win for itself an European ition which it had never held before. It was the second time that rland under a foreign ruler had become the centre of a wide- ading system of foreign conquest It had been so under Cnut^ as again beginning to be so under Rufus. But under Cnut the icy and the warfare of which England was the centre was confined )lly to the North. In Southern Europe Cnut appears in true ory* only as a peaceful pilgrim. The Dane made England the tre of schemes which were natural to the Dane; the Norman le her the centre of schemes which were no less natural to the man. Thct schemes of Rufus perhaps stretched as far in their I direction as those of Cnut Cnut had made himself the head of he nations of Scandinavian speech ; Rufas was striving to make self the head of all the nations of the Latin speech of GauL At is, as we have already seen, men bdUeved that his object was, not ely to extend the borders of Normandy at the expense of France, to add the French kingdom itself to his dominions. He sought eign in the island of the Seine as he reigned in the island of the imes, and to receive the unction of Rheims as he had received the tion of Westminster.^ It is more certain that he aimed to hem Bimock) describes the humble beginningf Journal, toI. zxviii. p. 184. of Pembroke at some length. But as the 74 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, Whether William Rufus had any personal share in this erpedition may be doubted.^ But his absence in Normandy during the next year ( 1094) is given as the occasion of a general insurrection of the West, North, and South, in which the Normans were driven out of all their castles in South Wales, except Pembroke and Rhyd-y-gors.' This last castle is specially mentioned as having been built by the King^s orders, which shows that the conquest which was going on was not the mere enterprise of individual chieftains, but was a regular warfare carried on in the name of the King and kingdom. It is not however till the next year ^October 1095) that William cer^nly appears in person on the Welsh border. He then marched with the whole force of the realm as far as Snowdon,' and two years later he made another expedition, in which, as in the former, he is described as suffering much immediate loss.* But when we read that on his return he strengthened the border with castles, we may see that the campaign was far from unsuccessful in the long run.* The Welsh history of this reign ends, as it began, with a picturesque narrative of the death of one of the great lords of the North- Welsh march. It is plain that warfare in that region had turned less to the advantage of the English or Norman side than it had in the south. Robert of Rhuddlan was gone ; but the two great border Earls of Ches- ter and Shrewsbury were kept constantly on the alert by the incursions of the Britons within their earldoms.* The date of the conquest of Anglesey is not very clear ; it may have formed part of the unde- fined territory, held by the Marquess Robert.^ If so, it had been won back by the natives, and it was held for some years in defiance of Earls and King. Both the Earls bore the same name. Hugh of Avranchcs still reigned at Chester, and the earldom of Shrewsbury had passed to another Hugh, the son of Roger and Mabel. They * Mr, Floyd, in his paper on the Nor- man Conqocft of South Wales in the Archmlogical Journal, vol. xxviii. p. 298, coniiecto this expedition with the story told by Qiraldos (it. Kamb. ii. 1 ; vol. vi. p. 109, Dimock) of a visit paid by Wil- liam Rufus to Saint David's, and of a threatened conquest of Ireland. In both tales one is inclined to suspect that the name of the younger William has sup- planted that of his father. See vol. ir. pp. 11^. 461. ■ Ann. Camb. 1092 (1094). " Ricors or Rhyd-y-gors, according to Mr. Floyd, was in Caermarthenshire. The Brut, 1094 (1096), distinctly says that this castle was founded by William the son of Baldwin, •• by order of the King of England." ' This expedition and its ill suocest are recorded by all our authorities. EnglUh and Welsh ; but it is the English Chronide ouly which tells us the extent of the march. * Chron Petrib. 1097; Flor. Wig. 1097; Ann. Camb. 1097; Brut, 1095 (1097)* The Welsh writers enlarge on Uie piety of their countrymen. * Chron. Petrib. 1 09 7. * See the Chronicles, Welsh and English, through all these years. Our own Chrom- cle in 1095 records the destruction of the castle of Montgomery (sec vol. ir. p. 341) by the Welsh. ^ See vol. iv. p. 332, note 8. That there was a castle in the island before 1094 appears from Florence onder that jrear. EXPEDITION OF MAGNUS. IS recovered Anglesey (1098) by bribing some pirates from Ireland — doubtless from the Scandinavian ports — whom the Welsh chiefs Cadwgan ap Bleddyn and Gruffydd ap Cynan — the slayer of Robert of Rhuddlan — had engaged to help in the defence of the island.* Presently the Norman Earls had to strive against an enemy of the same race, who steps suddenly on the stage as if our history had rolled back for a generation. We seem to be carried back again to the days of Stamfordbridge and Senlac, when we read how King Magnus Barefoot of Norway, after conquests along the shores of Ireland, Scotland, the Western Isles, and Man, at last drew near with his Wiking fleet to the southern Mevania. And we seem to be still more wholly carried back to times which we are beginning to forget, when we hear that he had with him in his fleet Harold the son of Harold King of the English.' Of his twin-brother Wulf we had a glimpse for one minute, when the dying Conqueror set him free from his long captivity.' And so the last Harold flits before us, like the bird that took shelter in the hall of Eadwine. We know not how he found his way to the fleet of Magnus ; we know not what of good or of ill befell him after he had taken this momentary glimpse of a land which had such good cause to remember his father's name. The one recorded result of the voyage of Magnus was the death of Hugh of Shrewsbury, pierced in the eye, as though paying the wergeld for England's fallen King, by an arrow, shot, so men said, by the hand of the Norwegian King himself.* His earldom passed to his savage brother Robert of Belesme, who had inherited his mother's name and his mother's continental possessions.* Magnus sailed away to Scotkind, leaving no trace of his presence on British or English ground.* And with him his shadowy comrade, the last of the house of Godwine of whom English history has preserved even the name, fades away like a dream from our eyes. ' Ann. Camb. 1098. This Cadwgan appears in the English Chronicle, 1097, as chief of the ** ealdras " whom the Welsh chose on their revolt. * See vol. ir. p. 513. * See vol. iv. p. 48a. * The story of the invasion of Magnus and the death of Earl Hugh is told at length by Orderic, 767, 768, and by Soorro (Johnstone, 230-237; Laing, iii. 119-133). It is recorded also in the Welsh Chronicles, Ann. Camb. X098, Brut 1096, where the invader is strangely called ** Magnus Rex OermanisB " (see vol. ii. p. 264), ** Magnus brenhin Oermania.'* In our own Chronicles, 1098, we read simply, '* Hugo eorl wear8 ofslagen innan Aug!e- sege fram utwikingan.** Florence adds some details of the cruelties practised by Hugh of Shrewsbury in Anglesey. There is also a notice in William of Malmesbury (iv. 329), from which alone we learn the presence of Harold the son of Harold. See also Oiraldus, It Kamb. ii. 7 ; vol. vi. p. 129. * Chron. Petrib. 1098 ; Ord. ViL 768 C. * Unless we reckon the fact that a citizen of Lincoln kept his treasure. Ord. Vit. 81 2 C. The Brut sums up the whole story with the comment, *' So the French reduced all, both great and small, to be Saxons.** But it goes on to record further revolts and the return of Cadwgan and Orafiydd from Ireland. 76 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, If the last scene of the Welsh waifare of this reign brings ns thai unexpectedly accoss one who, under a happier star, might have been an English .£theling and an English King, the affairs of the other great dependency of the English Empire bring us yet more direcdy ^ce to face with the surviving descendants of the elder line of English kingship. Scotland fills a large place in the history of this reign, and it is plain that the affairs of the vassal kingdom were of no small moment in the eyes of the Southern over-lord. And at no timei before or after, did English supremacy show itself more practically in the course of events in the great Northern dependency. WiOiani Rufus, like his father, like Eadward and Cnut, has the Scottish King to his man ; and, as in the days of Eadward and of his mightier name- sake in later times, Scotland had to receive her King from the lord to whom he paid his homage. And now the JStheling Eadgar, who has ever anon flitted across our story, for a short time plays a leading part, and we get our most distinct glimpses of his sister, the holy Queen of Scots, and of the other members of the house which her marriage had brought into close relation with the affairs of Engkind. The beginning of disputes with Scotland seems to have sprung oat of the clause in the treaty between William and Robert which required the Duke to withdraw all countenance from the JEtheling.* Eadgar, as at other times, found shelter at the court of his brother-in-law, and his appearance there was presently followed (May 1091) by an inva- sion of England on the part of Malcolm. While Rufus was stOl in Normandy, the King of Scots for the fourth time entered northern Eng- land, advanced as far as Chester-le- Street, and again wrought the usual ravages.* He was driven back by the King's lieutenants,' Robert of Mowbray being doubtless among them ; but Rufus deemed that his own presence was needed. As soon as his continental affairs allowed him (August 109 1 ), he set out for Scotland with a land force — ^his ships set out also, but perished by the way — bringing his brother Duke Robert with him. Robert had himself once led a force into those parts ;* but his appearance now can hardly fail to have some reference to the presence of his banished friend Eadgar on the Scottish side. King and Duke marched as far as the Scots' Water, the Firth of Forth? ' See ftltove, p. 57.. \tt ))is tend bewistoo him fyrde ongeui sea- ' The Invasion is recorded in the don and hine g^yrdonJ' Mark the use of Chronicle and Florence (1091), who is the phrase *' good men.'* copied by Simeon, who alsa mentions the ^ See vol. iv. p. 458. invasion in his list of Malcolm's invasions ' Ord. Vit. 701 A« "Usque ad ma^ under X093. Orderic (701 A) shrouds num flumen, quod Scotte Watra didtur. the actual invasion under the words See Mr. Earle's note. Parallel Chronicles, ** Melcoma Rex Scotorum contra Regem 348. Orderic's account i» very confused, Anglorum rebellavit, debitumque servitium but he must have got this phrase from ei denegavit." some trustworthy source. • Chiron. Petrib. 109 1. •• |?a. gode maen HOMAGE OF MALCOLM. 77 and the King of Scots crossed the estuary to meet them in I-othian, thereby, as the English Chronicler pointedly remarks, crossing from Scotland into England.* The Duke and the -ffitheling played the part of mediators between the two Kings.* In one version Malcolm is made to profess that the earldom of Lothian had been granted to him, first by Eadward and then by the elder William. To Robert, as the eldest son of William, he had done homage for that earldom, and that homage he was ready to renew. But to the reigning King of the English he owed nothing.' If this account of a private discourse between Robert and Malcolm be at all trustworthy, we find the King of Scots taking up much the same line of argument which was afterwards taken up by many of his sfuccessors. He owed homage, not for the kingdom of Scotland, but for his possessions in England. Lothian was still acknowledged to be English ; for Lothian then he would do homage. So in after times, when the distinction between Scotland and Lothian had been forgotten. Kings of Scots refused to do homage for Scotland, or for Lothian as a part of Scotland, but were ready to be the King of England's men for Northumberland, Huntingdon, or anything else which they held, or claimed to hold, within the narrower boundaries of England as understood in their day. If Malcolm ever really used such an argument, it was doubtless only as a piece of diplomatic fencing. The negotiation ended in a renewal of the submission of Abemethy (1091), Which assuredly was not a submission for Lothian only. All things were to be put on the same footing as they had been under William the Great. The King of Scots again became the man of the King of the English, and the King of the English promised to his vassal all lands, honours, and payments which had been his in die time of the elder William.* The ' Chron. Petrib. 109 1. "He for mid his fyrde ut of Scotlande into Lo0ene on Eagblaod.** See Mr. Earle's note, p. 355. Florence oddly translates "LotSene" by **ia proTincia Loidis," which has been mistaiken for the Loidis of Baeda. ' Walter of Hemitigburgh (i. 23) brings in Eadgar in a strange fashion ; '* Robertus comes adrocant ad se quendam militem, Edgarnm nomine, quem Rex de Norman- nia expulerat et tunc Regi Makolmo militabat." * All this comes from Orderic, 701 B. See rol. iv. p. 532. After the words there qwyted he is made to .say, ** Deinde Guil- Idmus Rex quod antecessor ejus mihi dederat concessit, et me tibi priroogenito %no commendavit. Uiide quod tibi pro- misi consenrabo, sed fratri tuo nihil promisi ct nihil dcbeo.* Was this commendation to Robert, if it was ever made at all, made in 107a, or in 1080? * The Chronicler (1091) says, " Se cyng W. him beh^t on Jande and on ealloii >inge )Mes )>e he under his faeder aer haefde." Florence is more definite ; with him the clause runs, '* Ut Malcolmo xii. villas, quas in Anglia sub patre illius habuerat, Wille)* mus redderet.'* On all this see Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. pp. 48 1, 607 ; ii. p. cccKxxii. ; England and Normandy, iv. p. 348; Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 14a; ii. 401. Are the **xii. viiiz" the mansions which the Kings of Scotland held for their entertain- ment on their journey to the court of Eng- land ? See vol. i. p 389, and Lappenberg, Norman Kings, 233. It is singular that Simeon altogether leaves out the negotiation between William and MalcoUn^ 78 THE NORMAN- KINGS IN ENGLAND. Kings parted as friends, but the Chronicler again ]x>intedlj notices that it stood but for a little while.^ Eadgar also was taken into William's favour, and went back with Robert to Normandy.' The next year William took a step which could hardly have been pleasing to his new vassal, and which was doubtless meant as a measure of defence against him. It was now that he enlarged the kingdom of England, a different process from receiving tiie external homage of princes beyond its borders. The modem county of Cumberland had as yet no being. Its southern part appears in Domesday as part of Yorkshire ; its northern part, with its ca{Htal Carlisle or rather its site, was no part of England. Strathdyde beyond the Solway, if not absolutely incorporated with the Scottish kingdom, was at least held without dispute by the Scottish Kings, or by their sons to whom they granted it as an appanage. But between the parts of the old British kingdom which had thus passed severallj to England and to Scotland, ^is small fragment, whose extent may be fixed by the boundaries of the old diocese of Carlisle, still remained a separate principality. It was now held by a lord of the noblest Northumbrian blood, Dolfin the son of the famous Earl Gospatric,' and it is hardly possible that he can have held it in any other character than as the man of the Scottish King. The ancient capital Carlisle had been destroyed by the Danes in the wars of iElfred's day (c. 877), and it remained, whether altogether forsaken or not, at any rate with- out fortifications of the Norman t}T)e.* On what provocation we are not told, the Red King now marched into this district, the only comer of Britain where a man of English birth still kept any shadow of sovereignty. Dolfin was driven out, and William, like ^thelfia&d at Chester,^ made Carlisle again a city, defended, in the usual fashion, with walls and a castle.* Cumberland now became an English earl- dom,^ and its restored capital became in the next reign the seat of a > Cf. above, pp. 48, note 4, and 54. • The Chronicle alone mentions the return of Eadgar with Robert. ' See vol. iv. p. 356, and Mr. Hinde'i note on Simeon, p. 92. It can hardly be any other Dolfin, though the name is not uncommon. The country had been in possession of Malcolm in 1070 (ree vol. iy. p. 345). when Simeon says (p. 87), " Erat CO tempore Cumbreland sub Regis Mal- colmi dominio ; ** adding, ** doq jure pos- sessa, sed riolenter subjugata.** * Florence, who does not copy the Chronicle, and who is not copied by Simeon, says, " Haec civitas, ut iilis in partibus aliz nonmills, a Danis piganis ante cc. annos diruta. et usque ad id tempus mansit deserta.*' He does not mention Dol6n, whom we get from the Chronicle. Ordcric (917 B) calls it "Carduilum validisrimuin oppidum, quod Julius Cesar, at dicutt, condidit.'* ^ See vol. iv. p. J09. * Chron Petrib. 109a. It is odd that William of Malmesburj (Gest. P<»nt. mS) speaks of Carlisle as still half rained in his time. ^ The old mistake aboat an culdoin of Cumberland in the time of the Coaqveror, which misled even Sir Francis Palgrave (English Commonwealth, i. 449% and which was locally beli«*ved in 1873, *** pointed out by Lappenberg (Nonnaii Kings, 234"); see also Mr. Hrade's p^pcr on the Early History of Cumberland, xtk the Archaeolog'cal Journal (1859), ^ xvi. p. 227. RESTORATION OF CARLISLE. 19 newly-founded bishoprick. The land which was now added to ^England would seem to have been almost as desolate a£ the city; for colonists from the south, English and Flemish, were sent to occupy and till it.* This is a fact which should not be forgotten in discussing the puzzling ethnology of Cumberland and the neigh- bouring shires. We are not directly told whether Malcolm felt any grudge at this extension of the power of England in his own neighbourhood, and in some sort at his own cost. But a new quarrel broke out before long. Malcolm, like Duke Robert, began before long to complain of breaches of treaty on the part of William* The King of Scots was accordingly invited or summoned to the presence of his over-lord ; and he came, after the delivery of hostages, under the guidance of the former mediator, the iEtheling Eadgar. He was brought to the place of meeting at Gloucester (August 24, 1093) with mickle worship; but, when he came there, William not only refused to give him any satis- faction about the points in debate, but refused to see him at all.' It is added that William called on Malcolm to do right — a phrase of somewhat doubtful meaning — in the King's court, according to the judgement of the barons of England, while Malcolm maintained that he was bound to do right only on the borders of the two kingdoms, according to the judgement of the barons of both.* The exact point at issue is not very clear ; but we may be pretty sure that William and Malcolm construed the obligations of homage in two different ways. In any case Malcolm went away angry, and at once took his revenge was by a fifth invasion of England. He marched as far as Ahiwick, and there slain (November 14, 1093), some say by treachery, at all events by an ambush or sudden attack, on the part of Robert of Mowbray and his followers.^ With him died his eldest son Eadward, and a * The Chronicler (1091) says that Wil- liam **%yfi^2n hider sutS gewaende and mjrcele msiige cyrlisces folces mid wifan and mid orfe, {'yder samde, ^zr to wuni- senne ^sti land to tilianne." So Henry of nantingdon (213 6); '*Ex australibus Angiis partibos illuc habitatores trans- mint.** Florence leaves out the passage, bat I cannot help connecting this coloni- sation with the " Flandrenses qui North- hjmbriam incolebant,** of whom he speaks in 1 1 1 1 . " Northymbria " with him takes in Cumberland. I know of no better aothority than the so-called Bromton (X Sdiptt. 1003) for making Henry himself first settle these Flemings somewhere in the North. * Tbtf is the account of the Chronicler, who says nothing about Carlisle and nothing about homage, but who clearly implies that William had in some way broken his promise to Malcolm. • This comes from Florence. I do not profess to know exactly what is here meant by the legal phrase ** rectitudinem facere." According to one view, it means to do homage; according to another, it mean) to make amends for some alleged breach of the treaty. In either case it would be the act of an inferior to a superior. See Palgrave, English Common^ wealth, ii. cccxxxiv. ; England and Nor- mandy, iv. 356; Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 144; Lappenbcrg, Norman Kings, 235. * This invasion sunds as the fifth and 8o THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. pathetic tale is told of the way in whidh the holy Qaeen received die tidings of the death of her husband and her son, and how she presentif followed them to the grave.^ The sympathies of oar English and Norman writers lie wholly i^ith Margaret, and to some extent with Malcolm ; his own subjects at the time were of another mind. The innovations of Margaret, which seemed such blessed reforms in the eyes of writers at Peterborough, Worcester, and Saint Evrou], clashed against all Celtic national feeling. Discontent may well have slwnbered (hiring the reign of the great warrior who so often liarried EnghuuL but, as soon as he was dead, the real feeling of the Scottish peqile burst forth. The English Chronicler takes for granted that the slain Eadward, if he had lived, would have succeeded his father.* But he tells us distinctly, using the same constitutional language which he would have used in describing the election of an English King, diat the Scots chose Donald, the brother of Malcolm, to the vacant kingdom.' The first act of the new King marks the spirit in which he was chosen. He drove out all the English and French who had been received at the court of Malcolm.* Many of these, we maj believe, had fled from England to escape Norman oppression ; but, in the eyes of a King of the English of whatever race, the driving cot of any of his subjects could not fail to seem a national wrong. The new King of Scots too, we may be sure, was not anxious to renew his brother's homage to the English over-lord. A candidate for the Scottish crown was ready at William's court in the person of Duncan, the son of Malcolm and Ingebiorg, who had been given by his father as a hostage after the homage at Abemethy.* He had been set free by William the Great on his death-bed,' and he was now in the service of William the Red, and seemingly high in his favour. As Eadward had sent Malcolm to win the Scottish crown from Macbeth, so \^Iliam Rufus now sent Malcolm's son to win the same crown from his uncle Donald. For the crown that he was to win he did homage in such last in Simeon^s list. See also the Chroni- cle and Florence; Orderic, 701 C; Will. Malms. It. 311. The Chronicler uses the word *' beswikene ; ** William of Malmes- bury speaks of ** fraus ; ** while Orderic has a distinct tale of treachery. In Fordun, V. ao (see in Robertson, i. 147, and Mr. Hinde*s note to Simeon, 261), may be seen the legend which grew out of such phrases. Orderic, at Saint Evroul, be- wails the death of Malcolm. Simeon, nearer to the spot, rejoices in the judge- ment on the man who so often harried England. He is followed by William of Newburgh, and in a later age by T. Wykes. * The account of the pious death of Margaret is found in all our authorities except Simeon, who leaves out the passage in which Florence sets forth the merits of the wife of the arch-enemy. * Chron. Petrib. IC93. " Mid him wn eac Eadward his sune ofslagen, le cfter him cyng beon sceolde gif he hit gelifode.*^ ' lb. " And )n Scottas }*a Dufeiul to cynge gccuron, Melcolmes brotfer," So Florence. In Fordun (v. 21) wc get the Scottish legitimist version, * Chron. Petrib. 1093. » See vol. iv. p. 352. William of Malmesbury (v. 400) takes care to speak of Duncan as ** Malcolm! filius nothns,** which involves the whole question aboot Ingebiorg. * See vol. iv, p. 482. REVOLUTIONS OF SCOTLAND. 8l terms as the King of the English thought good (1093-4),^ and set forth at the head of a host, English and Norman. With their help he drove out Donald; but presently the Scots rose again, massacred his foUowers, but allowed him to reign on condition that he brought into the land no foreigners, English or French.' Presently another revolu- tion restored Donald (1094-1097), and Duncan was slain, as his namesake had been at the hands of Macbeth.^ At last, later in the reign of Rufus, a more successful attempt was made to place an English vassal on the Scottish crown. That crown was now bestowed by the over-lord on Eadgar (1097-1 107), the son of Malcolm and Margaret. His uncle and namesake the iEtheling was sent, like Siward in Eadward's day«, to place him by force on his other uncle's throne. The two Eadgars were victorious. The son of Margaret won his father's crown ; he received it as a vassal of England,* and held it till his death ten years later. Donald, so at least Scottish belief ran, spent the rest of his life in captivity and blindness.** The accession of Eadgar fixed the future history of Scotland. The tree Scots, the race of the Kenneths and the Duncans, had had their last chance under Donald. From that day down to Killiecrankie and Culloden, they might make themselves unpleasant and even dangerous neighbours to the men of the Teutonic South and the Teutonized East ; but they had no chance of again becoming masters. Under the sons of Margaret Scotland became an English kingdom. It might be politically distinct from the Southern England; it might even look on the Southern England with the bitterest hate ; but it was an English state none the less. Among the three elements of the Northern kingdom, Gaelic Scotland, British Strathclyde, and English Lothian, the English element henceforth had the predominance. And the land became from henceforth more open than ever to all comers who were English by either birth or by settlement. Duncan had been called on to drive out sill French and English immigrants. Under Eadgar and his successors, French and English immigrants grew and throve, till in the end a Balliol, a Bruce, and a Stewart, men » Chron. Petrib. 1093. "He to Jjam cjPDge com and swilce getrywSa dyde swa fc c]rDg set him habban wolde." The words of Florence are equally strong ; ** Ut ci regnura sui patris concederet petiit, et impetravit, illique fidelitatem juravit." So William oi Malmesbury, v. 400. ■ Chron. Petrib. 1093. • The language of the Chronicler, 1I094, is here very marked ; *' Dises geares eac )^ Soottas heora cyug Dunecan besyredon and ofslogan, and heom syKOan eft oOre syOe his Cedenm .Duieaal to eynge geoa- VOL V. mon. ]7urh hes lare and totihtinge he weaifJ to deax^e beswicen.** * The Chronicler (1097) is distinct on this head: "Ferde £adgar aB))eling mid fyrde |>urh Jwcs cynges fultum into Scotlande, and ]>et land mid stranglicum feohte gewann, and ))one cyng Duftnal ut adraefde, and his maeg Eadgar se waes Mel- colmes sunu cynges and Margarite )7aere cwenan ; he ]MBr on }mbs cynges Willelmes heldan to cynge gesette, and sy'50an ongean into Engleland for.** • Fordun« v. 25, 82 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. bearing the names of Norman villages or of English offices, found their way to the Scottish throne itself. It was a strange part of the strange destiny of the elder Eadgar that, incapable as he appears in English history, mocked as he so often was with vain hopes of the English Crown in his own person, he should, as lieutenant of a Norman King, as guardian of a Scottish King, win, not for England as a state or kingdop, but for the English blood and speech, one of the greatest and most lasting of its conquests. Of the internal government of William Rufus, after he was firmly established on his throne by the suppression of Odo's rebellion, our most detailed notices relate to ecclesiastical matters, to his famous dispute with Anselm. What we hear of him in secular matters comes to little more than one long outcry against the reign of " unright,?' one wail over broken promises, grievous exactions of money, and wrong- doings of every kind.^ One ground of complaint carries us to the days of the Pharaohs and the Tarquins.' The native Chronicler tells us, with the bitterness of a Hebrew toiling under Egyptian task- masters, how great was the burthen of the King's great works of architecture and engineering, the wall with which he compassed his father's Tower of London, the bridge which sparmed the Thames, the new Hall of Westminster in which he lived to keep the last two Whitsun festivals of his reign.' Of the many anecdotes of the Red King nearly all set him before us either in his impious or in his chivalrous character ; none perhaps are directly designed to set forth either the faults or the merits of his civil government. Yet one talc whose main object is to show his impiety, shows us by the way how strictly the forest-laws were enforced, and also how Englishmen who still kept their ancient wealth, or some portion of it, were special sufferers by them. Fifty such men, charged with some offence against the Conqueror's hunting-code, proved their innocence by the ordeal. Rufus blasphemed against the God who thus gave judgement against him, but he does not seem to have gone so far as to set that judge- ment aside.* One thing is plain, that such crimes, real or imaginary, as it suited Rufus to punish * were punished more severely than they ' S«e the language of the Chronicler in quibus adhuc iliis diebus, ex antiqaa his portrait of William under the year Anglorum ingenuitate, divitiarum quaedam I lOO. We get more details from Eadnier. vestigia arridere videbantur.'* But it would * Livy, i. 59. seem from the words of William of * The wail of the Chronicler goes up Malmesbury, iv. 319, that this severity under the year 1097. Under 1099 he extended equally to men of all ranks and records the keeping ofthe feast of Pentecost races; *' Non pauperum tenuitas, non for the first time in the new hall. Of. opulentum copia tuebatur; venationes. Will. Malms, iv. 521. quas rcx primo indulserat, adeo prohibuit ut * See the story in Eadmer, Hist. Nov. capitale esset soppHcium prendisse ccrvum." p. 48, Sclden. The alleged offenders arc * Will. Malms, iv. 314. ** Cujuscnnque described as " quinquaginta circiter viri, conditionis homuncolus, cujuscunque aimi' INTERNAL GOVERNMENT OF RUFUS. 83 had been punished in the days of hi& father. The code of William the Great allowed mutilation, but forbade death. William the Red did not shrink from inflicting both on Normans of high rank, zxid even on men of his own kindred.* How men of the conquered race were likely to fare it is not hard to guess* It is plain however that, whatever was the oppression of William's government, and whatever was the amount of licence allowed to his followers, he at least, like his fether but unlike his elder brother, firmly maintained the general peace of his dominions. In Normandy his rule at once put an end to the anarchy of the days of Robert, and with his death and Robert's return anarchy began once more.* And in Engkmd, if he could wink at crime in detail whenever it suited either his own purpose or his own caprice, he at least knew how to keep his turbulent barons in order. While the internal history of Normandy under Robert is one long record of private warfare, the internal history of England under Rufus gives us, after the suppression of the first rebellion, one revolt and one real or alleged conspiracy, both of which the power of the Crown was able to put down without much trouble. . The first, indeed the only revolt of this part of William's reign, was headed by Robert of Mowbray, who had succeeded his uncle Bishop Geoffrey in the earldom of Northumberland.^ He is described as the head of a party who were dissatisfied with the King on account of his strict enforcement of the forest-laws.* The object of the con- spirators is said to have been to depose and slay William, and to give the Crown to his cousin Count Stephen of Albemarle, the son of the Conqueror's sister Adelaide by her third husband, Odo of Champagne. But the immediate cause of the outbreak is said to have been one decidedly creditable to the Red King. Earl Robert had plundered some Norwegian merchant ships; he refused (1095) to appear in the Bang's Court to answer for the crime, and the King made good the losses of the sufferers at his own cost** Again summoned before the King and his Witan at their Pentecostal meeting,* the proud Earl re- fused, except on the delivery of hostages and a safe-conduct. We seem nis reus, statim ut de lucro' regis appell&sset, auiiebatur; ab ipsis latronis faucibus re- solvebatar laqueiis, si promisisset regale commodum.** * The difference between William Rufus and his father in this respect is well marked in the words put by William of Malnies- bory, iv. 306, into the mouths of the rebeb in 1088 ; ** Nihil actum morte patris, si quos ille vinzerit iste trucidet*' « Ord. Vit. 765 C, 784 B. ' See vol. iv. p. 459. * Florence alone (1095) records the movement on behalf of Stephen. I am now convinced, according to Mr. Staple- ton's later view (Rot. Norm. ii. xxxi.), that Stephen was the son of a whole sister of the Conqueror. See vol. ii. p. 414 ; iv. p. 542. * This comes from Orderic, 703 C, but his chronology is wrong. * Chron. Petrib. 1095. ''To Pente- costen wxs se cyng on Windlesoran, and ealle his witan mid him."' G 2 84 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. to be thus strangely hearing the words of Godwine and Harold * from the mouth of a Norman oppressor and criminal. A campaign in the North followed, a campaign which consisted chiefly in the besi^ing of castles, and which was interrupted by one of the revolts of the WelsL* The Earl was taken prisoner. His newly-married wife, MatOda, daughter of Richer of T Aigle and niece of Earl Hugh of Chester, held the stronghold of Bamborough against the King,' and 3rielded only when her husband was brought before the walls, with a threat that his eyes should be put out if the castle were not surrendered.* The castle was surrendered and his eyes were spared ; but the remaining thirty years of his life were spent in a dungeon, and he was held to be so truly as good as dead that his wife was allowed by a special papal dispensation to marry again.* The overthrow of Robert of Mowbray was followed by the con- fiscation and banishment of some of his fellow-conspirators. The next year sets before us ,a striking example of the working of one of the changes which the Conqueror had made in English juris- prudence. The wager of battle was now the established means of deciding doubtful charges between Norman and Norman, perhaps also between Englishmen who adopted Norman manners or aspired to courtly favour ;• The King's kinsman, Count William of Eu, who had served him so well in his Norman wars, was now appealed of treason by Geoffrey of Baynard before the assembled Witan at Salis- bury.^ The Count of Eu, worsted in the judicial combat (Jan. 14, 1 096), was blinded and foully mutilated. A pathetic tale is told, how, by a stretch of severity unknown to the days of the great William, the Count's kinsman, William of Alderi, was hanged, protesting his inno- cence to the last.' Other chief men were imprisoned or otherwise * See voLu. pp. 97, 407. ' The sieges of Tynemouth and Bam- borough are recorded in the Chronicle and Florence, 1 095, by Orderic, 703-704, while the result is given by William of Malmesbury, iv. 319. Henry of Hunting- don, Script, p. Bed. 214, describes the campaign in the same way as the others, and adds that Robert was puffSed up to revolt by his success against Malcolm. * Ord. Vit. 703 C, 704 B. Compare the Countess Emma at Norwich, vol. iv. p. 395. ^ This is mentioned by the Chronicler and Florence, but not by Orderic or Henry of Huntingdon. ' See Orderic, 704 B, for the marriage and its consequences. * See vol. iv. p. 433. The story of the duel between Ordgar ind Godwine (see Appendix R.) is a case of judicial combat between Englishmen. ^ Chron. Petrib. 1096, •• And on Oc- tal) Epyphan waes te cyng and eaUe his witan on Searbyrig. pser beteah Gosfrd Bainard Wijlelm of Ou )>es cynges mieg, ]>xt he heafJe gebeon on )>es cynges swic- dome, and hit him ongefeaht, and hiae 00 orreste ofercom." We here get the techni- calities of Norman jurisprudence in our ova tongue. William of Malmesbnry makes the Count of Eu give the challenge. ' The punishment of the two Williams is found in most of our authorities. William of Malmesbury is fullest on the ttory of William of Alderi. See also the Hyde Writer, 301, who brings in AmnJf of Hesdin as proving his innocence by hif champion. PUNISHMENT OF REBELS. 85 punished, among them Odo Count of Champagne and lord of Holder- ness,^ whose share, or alleged share, in the conspiracy seems to confirm the statement that the m^econtents designed to raise his son to the Crown. The Red King was troubled by no more revolts in England or in Normandy, unless we are to look on his own mysterious death as a more successful renewal of the schemes of Robert of Mowbray and William of £u. It is not easy to think of William Rufus in the character of a law- giver, nor do the annals of his reign contain any notices of direct legislation, at all events on secular matters. Yet there can be no doubt that it was during this reign that many of the changes in law and custom which could not fail sooner or later to follow on the forcible entry of the elder William began to show themselves more clearly. The race of feudal lawyers is now beginning to creep into light, in the person of Randolf Flambard and the other cunning clerks of the King's chapel. It was under them, and under their chivalrous master, that a whole jurisprudence of feudal ideas — the word feudal is bad in every way, but I know no better — which had hitherto lam in thd germ began to show themselves in a more distinct shape. Of these, as concerns general legislation, I trust to speak in my next Chapter, when I come to deal more fully with the effects of the Norman Conquest on English law and polity. I' have now to look at them as they bear on those ecclesiastical controversies which, more than any other events of his reign, drew the eyes of the world in general on the Red King and his doings. As if to refute the ignorant calumny that monastic and other ecclesiastical writers could think of nothing but the affairs of the Church, these ecclesiastical dis- putes fill a remarkably small space in all the contemporary writers of general history. They assert the righteousness of Anselm and the unrighteousness of Rufus ; but they pass by the details of the quarrel, or are content to refer their readers to the special biographer of the Archbishop.' The dispute between Anselm and William Rufus was, in one point of view, a dispute between right and wrong, between the righteous man and the unrighteous, between the man who was ready to sacrifice all for what he held to be his duty, and' the man into whose mind the idea of duty never entered. But the particular form which the quarrel took was one which could hardly have been taken by any quarrel beti^'een prince and prelate in the days when England was still ruled by her native Kings. It was, in more ways than one, a direct result of that new policy in ecclesiastical matters which had been ' "Eoda eorl of Campaine" is his style 332. The space given to Anselm in the in the Chronicle. Chronicle is singularly small. Florence ' See the references to Eadmer in Orderic, enlarges a little more, but only a little. 839 A, B, and WUHam of Mahnesbory, iv. 86 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. brought in by the Conqueror. A dispute between Church and State could hardly have arisen in those earlier days of England when the Church and the nation were, in the strictest sense, two aspects of the same body. But the Conqueror, by separating the ecclesiastical and temporal jurisdictions,* had taught men that Church and State were two distinct bodies, which, being distinct, might possibly be hostOe. Again, the insular freedom of the island Church passed away when the Crown of England became the prize of the armed missionaij of Rome, and when the bishopricks and abbeys of England were fifled with prelates of foreign birth. Some glimmerings of what might come if English prelates ceased to be Englishmen l^d been seen ages before, in the days of the Romanized Wilfrith. It had been seen in later times when the Norman Robert had refused, at the papal bidding, to consecrate a Bishop lawfully named to his see by the King and Witan of England.* Anselm, the just and holy, the friend of eveiy living creature, could win the love of the English people by his justice and holiness, and could rebuke the tyrant on his throne in the character of either priest or prophet. But, as the native of a foreign land, brought up in devotion to the fullest claims of a foreign Bishop, he could never be the leader of the English pec^le, like Dunstan or Stigand. Let us add too that, though England had had evil Kings before William the Red, she had never had a King in m^m evil had so distinctly stood forth as something antagonistic to good. -^thelred and the sons of Cnut had been weak and wicked ; but they had not declared themselves the personal enemies of their Maker. In all these various ways it followed that under William Rufus disputes arose between the ecclesiastical and temporal powers, such as never had been heard of, and never could have been heard of, in earlier times. And add to all this, that the few changes in avowed law and practice, the many changes in the spirit of administration, which had come in under William the Great were beginnmg to bear their natural fruits under William the Red. Where the feudal lawyer was so busily at work, the refinements of his new science could not fail soon to involve the national Church as well as the national State of England in its subtle meshes. We have seen that William the Conqueror had always steadily maintained that supremacy over the Church within his kingdom which had been handed down to him from the Kings who were before him. No Pope could be acknowledged in England against his will;* and Bishops and Abbots received the staff from the royal hands, while Hildebrand himself dared not to denounce the ancient custom of Eng- land as sacrilege or usurpation. But, with all the greediness which is spoken of as one of the worst points of the character of the elder * Sec vol. iv. p. 397. • See vol ii. p. 78, » Sec voL iv. p. 296. ECCLESIASTICAL SUPREAfACY OF THE CROWl^. 87 William, it is certain that he did not make a gain of those ecclesiastical powers which, on the whole, he used for good. He did not sell vacant benefices for money, nor did he .eke out his revenues by keeping them vacant that he might receive the profits. But we have already seen that the supremacy of the Crown as exercised by the Norman Kings was, though not greater in extent, yet something different in character, from the same supremacy as it had been exer- cised by their English predecessors. Under William Rufus the bad side of the change showed itself. The new division between the temporal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions made the King no longer seem the highest member of the national Church ; it gave him rather the look of an external friend or an external enemy. It was in this latter character that William Rufus showed himself. The most \ charitable construction of his acts cannot represent him as being j simply anxious to maintain the due supremacy of the temporal power. [ Nor did he simply, like many Kings before and after him, lay his j hands on the temporal goods of the Church. Lay hands on them he / did, and that in a new form which the subtle logic of the clerks of his f chapel easily taught him. Among them the foremost was Randolf j Flambard or Passeflambard, of whom we have already heard in the / days both of Eadward and of William,^ and who now rose, as was the I fashion of the time, from the post of royal chaplain to the highest ( offices temporal and spiritual. He became Justiciar,^ and was in the 1 end raised to the see of Durham. It is he who seems to have been \ the first to draw a natural inference from those feudal principles which were now creeping in, and which he well knew how to turn to\ the advantage of his master. The new ideas taught men no longer \ to look on an ecclesiastical office and the temporal possessions at- 1 tached to it simply as an ofi^ endowed with lands, lands held, like I other lands, according to law, and liable to such services as the law \ might Uy upon them. The estates of a bishop or abbot came now to \ be looked on as a fief, a benefice? held personally of the King by the tenure of military service. According to the reasoning of the feudal law, whenever anything hindered the due performance of the duties charged on the fief, the fief fell back for the time into the hands of the lord. From this principle sprang the feudal doctrines about ' See vol. IT. p. 354. Hiitory. i. 298. 347. 348. It seems plain ' The diflTercDt passages which describe that he was Justiciar. the offices held by Flambard will be found • Oddly enough, in modem use the word in the Chronicle, 1099; Florence, 1099, htntfiee has come to be used only of 1 100 ; Orderic, 786 C ; William of Malmes- ecclesiastical benefices. The distinction bury, iv. 314, and Gest. Pont. 374; Ead- between the etymological and the technical mer, Hist. Nov. ao ; Henry of Hunting- sense of the word is brought out by don. Script, p. Bed. 216 A. Most of Hadrian the Fourth in his letter to the them are collected by Lappenberg, Norman Emperor Frederick in Radevic of Freising, Kings, a a6. See also Stubbs,Co^itutional iii. 9 a. 88 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. wardship and marriage, and from thb principle sprang also the doctrine that the revenues of a vacant bishoprick or abbey ought to go to the King dming the vacancy. During the vacancy there was no one to perform the duties which were charged upon the fief; the lord therefore took the fief for the time into his own hands. It is easy to see into what abuses this practice might grow in the hands of an unscrupulous King. We have seen that hitherto the way of ap- pointing English bishops and abbots had been somewhat uncertain.^ Sometimes the King, with or without the advice of his Witan, had directly appointed to the vacant office. Sometimes he had approved the choice of the convent or chapter. But in no case could an English prelate be ()ut in possession of his office and of the temporal possessions attached to it without the consent of the King at some stage or other of the process. We are told that the unscrupulous intellect of Randolf Flambard suggested to his master an unjMrindjM use of this power, by which bishopricks and abbeys were kept vacant as long as it suited the interests of the royal coffers to keep them vacant' The fief had fallen back to the lord, and the lord let its revenues out to farm, till some caprice or some immediate necessitf led him to grant it out afresh. A further opening was thus made for the crime which had stirred the soul of Hildebrand to wrath, but finom which the hands of the Conqueror had been honourably clean. We have heard now and then in earlier times of English bishopricks and abbeys being bought and sold, sometimes by the Kings themselves, sometimes by the greedy courtiers around them.' Under Rufus the practice became systematic. He could seldom be brought to fill up a vacant office, except as the price of a sum paid down which made it worth his while to give up the profits of the vacancy. He thus began an abuse which went on long after his time, and a faint survival of which still lingers in our law. Whatever may be thought as to the secular position of the prelates of those days, and however logically the rule might be derived from feudal principles, there can be no doubt as to the bad working of a law which made it the interest of the King to keep the high offices of the Church as long as possible without holders. What the system came to in the days of Rufus himself is set forth in the emphatic words of the Chronicler ; " In his days, ilk right fell and ilk unright for God and for world up arose. God's churches he brought low, and the bishopricks and abbacies whose elders fell on his days, all he either sold with fee or in his o^vn hand held and set to gavel, for that he would be the heir of ilk man, ordained and lay. And so on the day that he fell, he had in his own hand the archbishoprick of Canterbury and the bishoprick of Winchester * See Appendix I. toL ii. * See Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 298. » Sec vol; i. pp. 338. 353; ii. p. 43. DEVICES OF RANDOLF FLAMBARV. 89 and that of Salisbury, and eleven abbacies all set to gavel.'' ^ Randolf Flambard himself was an example in his own person of the woiidng of the custom which he had brought in. His services were at last rewarded by the great Bernician bishoprick ; but it was not till the church of Saint Cuthberht had stood for three years without a pastor, after the second reign of William of Saint Carilef had been brought to an end by his death.' This maimer of dealing, with the high offices of the Church seems to have led, as it could hardly fail to lead, to a general degradation of the clerical order throughout his kingdom. In an age when education and intellectual pursuits of all kinds were mainly confined to the clergy, the effect of such a way of dealing with ecclesiastical things was, not the substitution of kiymen for clerks in places of wealth and power, but the throwing of such places into the hands of a class of clerks who were, in a moral point of view, among the worst of their order. A man could no longer hope to obtain a bishoprick or an abbey by practising the virtues which became a Bishop or Abbot But, by practising all kinds of secular callings, by becoming a farmer of the roysd lands or of the Church lands that were in the royal hands, by undertaking causes in the King's courts, and by holding any secular office, great or small, in the King's service, he might in the end scrape together wealth enough to buy the rank and authority of a Bishop or Abbot.^ In all times and places where the disposal of ecclesiastical offices rests with the Sovereign, those churchmen who are immediately engaged in the Sovereign's service cannot fail to have a start in the race for prefer- ment It was so under Cnut, under Eadward, and under the Conqueror. And under the Conqueror we see the first beginnings of that class of clerks of the King's chapel or chancery * who had so large a share in the administration of the kingdom, and who even under the Conqueror had often been rewarded with bishopricks.* Under William Rufus the Chancery became a nursery of clever and unscrupulous church- men. They showed themselves congenial spirits with the King, per- haps in his private vices,' certainly in his public exactions ; and they * Chron. Petrib. 1 100. The words of the Chronii-ler about the King wishing to be heir to every man, layman as well as clerk, seem pointed at the new-fangled feudal notions with regard to secular as well as ecclesiastical property. * The Chronicler records the death of William of Saint Carilef on January I, 1096, but Randolf Flambard did not receive the bishoprick till Pentecost, 1099. ' It is immediately after his comparison of the conduct of William Rufus with that of his father that William of Malmes- bury (iv. 314) gives his curious description of the general degradation of the clergy at this time ; ** Nullus dives nisi nummularius, nullus dericus nisi causidicus, nullus pres- byter nisi (ut verbo parura Latino utar) firmarius." * On these derks of the chapel and chancery, whose position illustrates the way in which the word clerk has got its different meanings in modern use, see Palgrave. iv. 55. ^ See vol. iv. pp. 264, 469. * Besides the scandals which William of po THE XORMAX K2XGS IX ENCLAXD, seem to ha%'e ahnost forgotten their clerical dander till die day came vben the veal*ii which thej had amassed proved eoongfa to raise them to some of the great places of the Cfam-cfa, in the way in idudi men did raise themselves to them in the days of William Rnfiis. It was in the midst of a state of things like this that the holj Anselm, whom we have already seen as a visitor to our diores and as a defender of the fair fame of one of England's woithiest sons/ came to dwell among ns as the successor of the English martyr for whom he had spoken up against foreign gainsayers. In q;>eakiiig of this memorable man, I will fo1k>w the example of our native Chroniclers, and dwell only on those parts of his career which throw light on the effects of the Conquest and the general working of the Norman nile in England. We are told that, as long as Lanfranc lived, his influence kept tbe ^ices and misgovemment of Rufiis under some degree of restraint' When both his father and his tutor were gone, they hurst fordi in full force. Among his other misdeeds, he kept the metropc^tan see vacant for four years. Among the anecdotes of his impiety, some set forth the mockery with which he answered the entreaties of the chief men of his kingdom when they pra}*ed him that he would no longer leave the English Church without a chief shepherd.' At last a sickness which seemed to be unto death overtook him while holding his court at Gloucester (Lent, 1093). In the agonies of a temporary repentance, he promised reformation of his evil ways, pro- mises which were speedily forgotten as sooti as he was restored to health.* But, during the short season of his penitence he had been led to do one act which could hardly be undone. The Abbot of Bee was now in England, caUed thither at tlie earnest prayer of Eari Hugh of Chester, whose ailments of body and mind needed the pre- sence of the faithful guardian of his soul's health.' We are told that tlie common expectation of all men looked on Anselm as the man Malmefbury in hii first rersion of the Getta Pontificum (274) told of Randolf Flambard bimself, bat which in his second edttioo he thoo^t it jyradent to strike out* hii first edition also, but not his second (31 3)* contains stories of the like kind a>^in»t Robert Bioet, Bishop of Lincoln, *' qui nihil anquam pensi fecerit, quo- minus oninis libidinis et infamis et reus es»ct/' * See vol. iv. p. 300. • The influence of Lanfranc orer Rafus is stated stx^ strongly by William of Mal- 'ry. iv. 513, but it is implied also ia the picture given by Eadmer, Hist. Not. 14. ' See the account in Eadmer, pu 564. Compare Church, Anselm, 1 76. * This comes out strongly in tbe Cbrony cle, 1093 ; *' And on his broke he Gode fela bebsesa behet, his agen lif 00 riht to bedene and Godes C3rrcean griSian and friSian, and nxfre ma eft wH$ fee gesyllan, and ealle rihte lage on his |>eode to hab- bene . . . ac \^\ he syf^an aetbraed, }p\ him gebotad wzs and ealle )« gode laga forizt )« he us aer behet." * See Eadmer, Hist. Not. 14; Vit. Ans. ti. I. See voL iv. p. 334. ANSELM APPOINTED ARCHBISHOP, 9 1 vrho should fill the vacant archbishoprick, and one of the effects of the King's short day of good intentions was to invest Anselm, sorely against his will, with the insignia of the archiepiscopal office.^ But it should be noted that Anselm s unwillingness was simply an unwilling- ness to accept the office under any form. We hear not a word of any scruples on his part against becoming a Bishop, if he was to become a Bishop, after the manner which the law of England pre- scribed Anselm received the archbishoprick from William the Red, as Stigand had received it from Eadward, as Lanfranc had received it from William the Great. He received the staff from the King's hand; he became the King's man;* and he uttered no protest against the writ in which William King of England — the new-fangled title was now coming in — announced to all his faithful subjects, French and English, that he had given the arch- bishoprick of Canterbury and all that belonged to it to Archbishop Anselm.* The scruples which Anselm felt on these matters in later times all came of his closer intercourse with Rome ; they were scruples which were as yet unknown either at Bee or at Canterbury. Nor do we find Anselm expressing the lightest scruple as to receiving the archbishoprick by the gift of the King only, without any reference to ^the elective rights of the monks of Christ Church or of any other ecclesiastical body. The reluctance of Anselm to accept the office arises only from his personal unwilhngness, and from the tibs, spiritual and temporal, which bound him in various ways to the Duke of the Normans, to the Archbishop of Rouen, and to his own monks of Bee* Of any conscientious dislike to the way in which the archbishoprick was conferred, repugnant as that way was to all the doctrines for which Hildebrand and his successors had been striving, we hear in the present stage of Anselm's history not a word. The consecration of Anselm did not take place till eight months after his first investiture with the pastoral staff by the sick bed of the Red King. Meanwhile William, now restored to health, had found grounds of dispute with the Primate-elect of his own choosing. Some of these had to do with the possessions of the see, which, while they * The ftory if told in all its viridncsi by • See the writ in Rymer, i. 5 ; " Willicl- Eadroer, Hiit. Not. 16-18. See Church, mus Rex AngliflB, episcopis, comitibus, Anselm, 179. ricccomitibns, ceterisque fidelibus sais, * Eadmer, Hist. Not. ao. " Ille igitur, Francis et Anglis, salutem.'* He %ot!i on more et exemplo praedecessoris sui inductvs, to grant the archbishoprick and its pos- pro usQ teme, homo regis fiictus est, et, sessions, much as Cnut or Eadward would sicot Lanfrancos suo tempore fuerat, de have done, including rights ** super tot toto archiepiscopatu saisiri jussus est." theines quot Ecclesia Christ! concessit Eadmer, writing by the light of later papal Edwardus Rex cognatus meus." dedsions, feels a scruple which Aiisehn did * See Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 19 ; Church, not feel at the time, 184. 9S THE yORJiAX AVXCS AV EXGLAXD. were sdll in his grasp, the King^ was br no means eager to give op.^ This was a common and yulgar groond of qoarrel ; another had refer- ence to the general state of the Qiarch and to the customs of Engiand as esublished bj the laws of the Conqueror. The see of Rome was still, as in the days of Hildebrand, disputed between two rival Pontifi. Victor had succeeded Gregonr, and Urban had succeeded Victor ; but Wibert or Cement still lived^ and was still deemed the lawful Pontiff by the Imperial party. By the laws of the Conqueror it rested with the King to acknowledge which Pope be would. Rufos had not jeC acknowledged either; and in truth, to judge from the words of English writers, it would seem that the English nation for the most part neither knew nor cared much about the controversy,* With Anselm the case was different ; the rightful position of the Apostdic See seemed of far greater moment in ccmtinental than in insular eyes, and the Abbot of Bee, along with the rest of the Norman Church, had bound himself to Urban by ties which the Archbishc^ of Canter- bury could not throw off. The consecraticm at last took place (Dec. 4, 1093) without any setdement of this question; but it woke up once more another controversy, which to Englishmen perhaps seemed of greater moment. The consecrator was Thomas of YoA. He objected to the formula which spoke of the Kentish Archbishop, as Metropolitan of all Britain, zud Anselm was consecrated as Primate of all Britain, but as Metropolitan, it would seem, only of his own province.' The year of Anselm's appointment was a year chiefly concerned with the affairs of Scotland, the year of the death of Malcolm and Margar-^, and of the momentary revival of the true Scottish nadonality under I>r>nald. The next year >»-as the year of William's second expe- dition U> Normandy. A fresh dispute arose (February 1094) because the proud King despised the Archbishop's gifts to^^-ards the cost of the war,* and because of the outspoken rebuke which Anselm gave the King for the disorders of his public and pTi\'ate life. This was a rebuke which Rufus said that Lanfranc would not have dared to make to his father f but it was a rebuke which his father in his worst days had assuredly never needed. Then came the scene at Rocking- ham (March 11, 1095), the forerunner of the more famous scene which, seventy years later, was to take place between another King ' Sec Eadmer, Hist. Nor. 30. /«r»6a/iir,quidtcebanturRoinanipoiitificcs, ' Eadraer, p. 31. "Erant Ronue in a se invicera discordantes.** illis diebiis, sxat pracdiximns, dao poniifices, * The distinction in Eadmer, Hist. Nor. qui a dirersis apostolid noncopabantur ; a I, is whether the Church of Canterbury sed quis eonim canonice, quis secus, fnerit is ** totius Britanniae metropoUtaaa,*' or institutns, ab Anglis usque id teroporis only ** totius Britannia primas.** ignor^tbatur." Compare abore, p. 60. and * Eadmer. Hist. Nov. 14. vol. ir. p. 396. So before, p. 35 ; ** Erant * lb. ** Nee antecessor tuns aodcret quippe illo tempore duo, ut in AngUa ullatcnus patri mco talia dicere.** ANSELM AT ROCKINGHAM, 93 another Primate within the bounds of the same shire.* The ion again turned on the acknowledgement of Urban. Anselm still to go to the Pope for his pallium, but from what Pope was seek it ? No scene was ever more vividly painted than the story 5 great gathering at Rockingham is painted by Anselm's biogra- We get living pictures of the Red King's most trusty advisers, clerical and lay, of Bishop William of Durham and of Count rt of Meulan, who had both found it to their advantage to serve zeal, if not with servility, the King to whom they had once been ies.* But incidents during the meeting showed that the general g of the laity, high and low, was on Anselm's side, while the e Bishops of William's court were seeking his overthrow.^ There lothing as yet in the position taken up by Anselm which could iny reasonable offence to the great barons, whose position was me measure independent of the King ; and to smaller men, ler of Norman or English birth, the Archbishop, both oflScially ^et more personally, would seem to be their only possible pro- • against royal tyranny. In the end, the council broke up without ig to any real decision on the questions at issue. A truce, as it called, was patched up, and such submission as Anselm made nade with a reservation of his duty to Pope Urban.* In the e of the year — the year of the rebellion of Robert of Mowbray — im of his own accord settled one question in Anselm's favour, ully acknowledged Urban,* and received his Legate, Walter >p of Albano, who came (1095) as the bearer of the pallium for m, and as the collector of the arrears of Romescot or Peterpence, I seems not to have been paid since the accession of Rufus.' An pt on the King's part to bring about the deposition of Anselm pal authority — so easy is it for men anxious to gratify a personal e to cut away the ground from beneath their own feet — failed ^? So did an attempt to make Anselm receive his pallium from ic scene at Rockingham is described mer. Hist. Nov. 26 et seqq. ihop William is the chief speaker at gham, where Eadmer describes him ** homo lingiuB voiubilitate facetus pura sapientia pneditus.** Earl comes out more prominently in gathering; but I presume that he •ersoo intended by Eadmer (30) as rtus quidam ipsi regi -Talde famili- \ in Eadmer (39) the incident of lilcs unns de multitudine prodeiif,** icfa Anselm "inteUexit animum in raa secnm sententia esse/' In 30 follows the striking- contrast of the Barons and the Bishops. * Eadmer, 31. ** Sal va semper apud me debita reverentia et obedientia domini Ur- bani sedis apostolicsB prssalis." • lb. 32. ' Walter's mission is recorded by the Chronicler (1095), who gives him a good English title, which further helps him to 1 rime ; " Eac on )>is ylcan geare togeanes Eastron com Jmbs r^P^^ sande hider to lande, Jnet wses Waltear bisceop, switSe god lifes man, of Albiq Jwrre ceastre." He adds, ** and man sytS^an \»X Romgesceot be him sende, swa man manegan gearan seror oe dydc." ^ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 32. 94 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, the King's hands.* The Primate received the special badge of his archicpiscopal rank in all due form (June lo, 1095),' and he was held for a season to have been restored to the King's full favour. But good and evil could not long abide together in even outward agreement, least of all when good and evil were embodied in fonns which must have been so specially provoking to one another as those of Anselm and William Rufus. For t\i-o years (1095-1096) there was no open breach ; Anselm, though forbidden to hold a synod— another fruit of the Conqueror's separation of the ecclesiastical powers — discharged his metropolitan duties, and, in his character of Patriarch of all the lands beyond the sea,^ he consecrated more than one Bishop for the eastern cities of Ireland.* At last, in the year of the last Welsh war in which the King took a personal share (1096), the final quarrel broke out. Rufus, on his return from Wales, complsuned that the men whom the Archbishop had sent to the royal army were utterly unfit for service.'^ Anselm was summoned to appear and do right in the King's Court.* In return he craved for leave to go to the Pope at Rome. At successive meetings of the Witan (1096-1097), his request was refused, but the charge against himself was not pressed' A new ground of argument was thus opened for the King and his counsellors. It was against the customs of England for the Arch- bishop to go out of the kingdom without the King's leave.' Two points come out strongly in the contemporary biographer's vivid report of this assembly. We get a picture of the Bishops, such as Bishops were in the days of Rufus, drawn by one of themselves. They were men of the world, loving the world and its cares, busy in making provision for their kinsfolk ; they could not attain to the holiness of Anselm.* But we also see in Anselm himself the begin- ning of those casuistical distinctions, the beginning of that system of appealing to a foreign power, which comes out still more strongly in the life of his successor Thomas. He has promised to observe the customs of the realm, but only so far as they are conformable to the law of God.^** Nor will he swear or promise that he will forbear to appeal to the see of Rome from any charge which may be brought " Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 32. Chester; Hist. Nov. 37-4I. It cannot be ' lb. 34, and the Chronicle, 1 095. said that anything was really tettled at any • Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 30. ** Primas est, of them. non modo istius regni, sed et Scotiz et " Kadmer, ii. p. 39. Hiberniz necne adjacenthim insularum.** ^ Eadmer, 39. • Sec vol. iv. p. 359. >• lb. The distinction drawn by Anselm • Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 37. is that he would observe •* secundum • lb. " Rectitudinem facere.** The Uciim " such customs as were *• per recti- phrase which we find elsewhere applied to tudinem et secundum Dcum." In the the King of Scots. Cf. its use the other mouth of a less scrupulous person than way in Orderic, 857 D. Anschn this might mean anything, but it ^ Eadmer describes the successive meet* is something quite different from the '* salvo ings, ending with the final one at Win- ordine meo *' of Thomas. ANSELM LEAVES ENGLAND. 95 against him.^ No one can doubt the single-mindedness of Anselm ; but the kind of position which he now took up fully explains the change of mind in the lay nobles who had stood by him at Rocking- ham, but turned against him at Winchester. They would defend Anselm when he was attacked on unjust and frivolous charges ; but they would listen to nothing which called in question the customs of the realm, or which tended to bring in a foreign jurisdiction. In the end Anselm triumphed; he was allowed to go, and that without pledging himself to any line of conduct aller he had gone. And though he was followed by insults up to the last moment, he did not go without taking a touching farewell (October 15, 1097), in which the godless King, moved perhaps for a moment, did not refuse the blessing of the saint.* "He took leave of the King," says the Chronicler, " though it to the King unwilling were, as men deemed, and over sea he fared, because it thought him that man in this nation did litde after right and after his dight" • He went to be received in other lands as the Pope of another world,* as saint and confessor. His theological skill was held to have successfully defended the one theological dogma which the West has striven to force on the changeless East." His cravings to be allowed to lay aside his thank- less office were refused by a Pontiff who knew better than to give up an inch of ground to the enemy.* But no real help was given, or could be given. No excommunication was hurled against the tyrant from whom the saint had fled. But an excommunication was denounced (April 1099) against all who should do as Anselm himself had done, against all churchmen who should accept investiture of ecclesiastical benefices from lay hands, against all churchmen who should become the men of a temporal lord, and should put their pure hands between the polluted hands of an earthly sovereign.^ In short, the Bishop of Rome took upon him to denounce the laws of England and of Normandy as accursed. A foreign prelate dared to decree, that what no man had scrupled to do in the days of King Eadward and in ' Eadmer, Hist. Not. 39, 40. Anselm*s objection to the oath is, ** Hoc enim jurare, beatmn Petrum est abjurare; qui autem beatom Petrum abjiirat, Christum, qui eum toper Ecclesiara suam principem fecit, in- dubitanter abjurat." ' This impressive scene is described by Eadmer (41) with almost more than his usual vividness. It comes out well in the narrative of Sir Francis Palgrave, iv. 219. ' 1097. ** ForOam him )nihte )«t man on Jrisiie )>eodan lytel zfter rihte and zfter his dyhtc dyde. By losing the word '•dyhie'* — the kindred verb is not quite dead — ^welose the rime of the older English. * Eadmer, Vit. Ans. ii. ^f a. See vol. i. p. 90. * On the Council of Ban, held in Oc- tober, 1098, see Hist. Nov. 49. There is a special treatise of Anselm, '* de Proces- sione S. SpiritiLs.** * HUt. Nov. 48. ^ The astounding language of this decree will be found in the Historia Novonmi, p. 53. In the texts both of Seldcn and Migne I venture to correct *' Angelorum " for " Anglorum." The notion of our 'angelica faciet** seems to follow us everywhere. 96 THE NORMAX AVXGS IN ENGLAND. the days of King William could no longer be done without dnv- ing on the doer the wrath of Heaven and of Heaven's suj^xned vicegerenL Thus, for the first time in English historv, the highest sabject of the English realm carried, in fact, if not in form, an ai^peal from fab own sovereign to a foreign power.' For the first time, an Englisfamu by adoption, if not by birth, sat by without a protest, while a foreign priest took upon him to annul the laws of England. And yet who can dare to blame Anselm for doing what, in any earlier reign, no less than in our own day, would have seemed the blackest of treasons? Under the rule of William the Red, law had become rnilaw, and in appealing from him to the apostolic throne, Anselm might deem that he was appealing from mere force and fraud to the only shadow of right that was still left on earth.' In appealing to Rome, in the person of Urban, he at least appealed to something higher than the personal will of a profligate and capricious tyrant For in those dajfs of England's bondage, the laws of England, the decrees of her \^taii, the utterances of her Earls and Bishops, had sunk to be only the mouth-pieces of the arbitrar}- will of her foreign oppressor. AH this could never have been under the worst of England's native Kings. With a foreign King on her throne, with foreign Bishops at her altais, the appeal to a foreign power no longer seemed something out of the ver}' order of nature. And all this shows too how utterly even the greatest of men may fail in their schemes, when they forge weapons which they themselves can wield, but which in other hands may be turned against their wielders. When the Conqueror placed the two swords in separate hands, he made it possible that those swords should clash against each other. When, even before the ^English Crown was his, he called on the Roman Pontiff to judge between him and its lawful holder, he taught men to look to a power beyond the sea as a ruler and a judge in the affairs of England He taught men to argue that, if the Roman Pontiff could rightly be called to judge between two claimants of the English Crown, he might also be rightly called upon to judge between the wearer of that Crown and his own subjects. I'he Conqueror had called on the Roman Bishop to set aside the law of England, to annul that act of the English people which had given their Crown to Harold and not to William. It mig^t well l>e deemed that the Roman Bishop might be more rightly called on to set aside other portions of the law of England, when that law had been turned into unlaw, when right seemed embodied in the power which spoke from beyond the sea, and when the brute force ' I rcferre the possible case of William importance as that of Anselm. of Saint Carilef (see above, p. 50) ; and in ' See Church's Life of Aoselm, p. any case his appeal was not of the same 223. DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 97 of unright seemed embodied in the foreign master to whom the powers, but not the spirit, of the ancient Kings of the Island realm had passed. In dealing with the events of this wonderful reign, less as a direct narrative than as a commentary on the results of the yet more wonder- ful reign that went before it, I have grouped the facts rather according to the connexion of subjects than according to the strict order of time. But the departure of Anselm from England has again brought us near to the end Of the thirteen years of the reign of the Red King, ten had passed when he bent his head for the last time to receive the blessing of the holy Primate. In the three years still to come (1097- 1 100), while Anselm dwelt as an honoured exile at Lyons, at Rome, at Bari, while William spent on his wars or his pleasures the vast revenues of the mother church of England, events "of which I have already sf)oken crowded fast on one another. Scot- land received her King from the English over-lord ; the Norwegian invader, and with him the son of Harold of England, showed himself for a moment off the coast of Britain ; Helias of Maine was driven from the city which he had again made his own by the untiring energy of the Red King. And now the end was come. The last year of WiUiam Rufus was peaceful; we hear nothing of wars or revolts, but only of lawful gatherings on the three spots where the Kings and the Witan of England were wont to come together.* The Red King was at the height of his power and his pride. He was lord from Scotland to Maine ; the truce secured him against his own lord at Paris ; he had nothing to disturb the enjoyment of his own will; there was no enemy to dread, no troublesome monitor to rebuke or to warn. But warnings, so men deemed, were not wanting. Strange sights and sounds showed themselves to men's eyes and ears;' strange warnings came to the doomed King himself; if Anselm was gone, less renowned prophets of evil arose to play the part of Micaiah.' All warnings were vain. As all the world has heard, the Red King died (Aug. 2, iioo), by what hand no man knew,* in the spot which his father's cruelty had made a wilderness, glutting his own cruelty to the last moment of his life by the savage sports which seek for pleasure in the infliction of wanton suffering. Cut off without shrift, without repentance,* he found a tomb within ' The Chronicle records the Christmai Henry of Huntingdon, in WiUiam of Ocm6t at Gloucester, that of Ea»ter at Malmesbury, iv. 33a, 333 ; but most fully Winchester, that of Pentecost at West- in Orderic.ySi. minster; directly after Pentecost the signs ' See the warning of the monk of and wonders begin. Gloucester in Orderic, 78 a A. ' We get the signs and wonders in * See Appendix V. the Chronicle and Flofcnce, x 100, in ' *' Botcn behreownnge and ae^cere dsd* VOL, V. H 98 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. the Old Minster of Winchester, but the voice of clergy and i)eople, like the voice of one man, pronounced, by a common impulse, the sentence which Rome had feared to pronounce. As Waliheof and Simon and Thomas of Lancaster received the honours of a popular canonization, so William Rufus received the more unique brand of a popular excommunication. No bell was tolled, no prayer was said, no alms were given, for the soul of the one baptized and anointed ruler whose eternal damnation was taken for granted by all men as a thing about which there could be no doubt.^ Yet, by the strange irony of fate, while the tomb of his father, while the tombs of Harc^ and Waltheof, have been swept away, we may still see in the choir of the Old Minster' the stone, marked by no legend or ornament (x image, which men laid, whether in awe or in gladness — ^it could not be in sorrow — over the unhallowed corpse of a King who had been so highly gifted, but who had, in a way that few men ever have done, chosen of fixed purpose to turn his mighty gifts into instruments of evil § 3. The Reign of Henry the FirsL 1100—1135. We enter now on a long and busy reign, on a time when changes which the Norman Conquest brought with it were busily at work, but when their work was mainly done in silence. England was now fast settling down under the new state of things. We now begin to see the first working of those causes which, before a century had i>assed, had drawn together all the natives of the soil without thought of older differences of speech and race. The King who now came to the Crown came to it with the hearty good will of the English people. All hope of a restoration of the native dynasty had passed away. In truth the new dynasty had in some sort become more native than the old one. Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, was, by an exercise of that feeling which always sees the best in every man of royal birth, looked on as an Englishman. He alone of the children of the Conqueror could claim to be an English -^theling, bom on English soil, the son of a crowned King and his Lady. Such an one might seem to have higher claims, he might even seem to be more truly English, than the last surviving male of the house of Cerdic, who was not the son of a crowned King and who was not born on English bote," says the Chronicler. So Eadmer, few who lamented Rufus were " stipendi- Hist. Nov. 54. arii niilites et nebulones ac rulgaria scorta." ' Compare the account in Willram of * So it was when I was last there; I Malmesbury, iv. 333, with the more out- hear that the Red King has since received spoken tale of Orderic, 78a, 783. The the uulookcd-for honours of a translation. REIGN OF HENRY THE FIRST. 99 soil. And, though Eadgar had under the reign of Rufus shown him- self in a higher light than he had shown himself under the reign of the Conqueror, yet it was plain that he had a greater gift of winning crowns for others than for himself. Eadgar too, the constant friend and follower of the Norman Robert, might almost seem to have passed into a Norman, while Henry, at least at the beginning of his reign, took every pains to hold himself up in the eyes of England as an Englishman. If anything was wanting to satisfy the national sentiment, it was doubtless supplied by his marriage with a wife who by the spindle-side came of the Old-English stock. The first act of his reign was another renewal of the laws of Eadward, and there is no reason to believe that this promise, so far as it meant anything at all, was seriously broken. The so-called Laws of Henry the First are not to be looked on as real statutes put forth by his authority ; but they are a witness to the law as it stood in his time, and, as such, they set before us a law which, in its main features, is still purely English. And in the glimpses which we get of Henry's administration of the law, alike in its good and its bad side, in the general peace and safety which he established, and in the notices of occasional hardship which peep out, we see little to make us think that there was much oppres- sion directly inflicted on Englishmen as Englishmen. We read a tale of bitter wrong in which we incidentally see that the suflFerer was a man of Old-English descent and speaking the English tongue. But there is nothing to show that a man of Norman descent might not have suffered as deeply at the same hands, and it is plain that the £ngli:sh sufferer met with Norman sympathizers.^ In fact the dis- tinction between men of Norman and men of English birth was now fast dying out, and another distinction was taking its place. We are often apt to look on distinctions of race and speech as having more weight than they really have, and to forget how easily the feeling of birth in the same land takes their place. This tendency is one which we constantly see in our own days. The wrongs of Ireland, the crimes of the Saxon, are constantly set forth by men whose names proclaim that their forefathers crossed into Ireland, perhaps with Strongbow, perhaps with Cromwell. They are set forth by men who do not understand a word of the ancient tongue of the island of which they make themselves the champions, and who are driven to set forth the tale of Saxon oppression in the Saxon speech. So too^ ^ I refer to the story which is told in- agency of a heavenly and an earthly cidentally by Orderic (628-631), in a patroness, Saint ^thelthrjrth and Queen letter from Hervey, the first Bishop of Matilda. See Appendix W. Of Ralph Ely. It describes tlie unjust treatment Basset we shall bear again in Ordc-ric which one Brihstan met with at the hands (905 D), where he has another Christian of the Justiciar Ralph Basset in 1 1 16, name, and how he .was delivered by the joint H a lOO THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, in a more harmless shape, the descendants of Norman and English settlers within the Welsh border, men bearing Norman or English names and unable to speak a word of the old British tongue, both identify themselves and are identified bj others with the land and the people among whom their fathers came, perhaps as oppressors, aiij« how as strangers. So too in the days with which we have to deal, the Norman settled on English ground, holding his estate by English law, not uncommonly the son of an English mother, soon came to look on himself and to be looked on by others as English rather than as Norman. That this change was fast taking place in the reign of Henry the First we have distinct proof. The reign of the Englisb- born King was, after all, not an English reign. It was in some respects even less English than the reign of his brother. Heniy, at least in his later years, was more constandy absent from England than Rufus had been. For some years before his death he lived mainly on the continent, engaged in planning and carrying oat a wide-spread scheme of foreign policy. We hear too the complaint that, in the bestowal of the great offices in his gift, Englishmen were shut out as systematically as they could have been under his father or brother. An English writer complains that nothing could induce King Henry to bestow any great ecclesiastical preferment on an Englishman. This, we are told, was largely owing to the influence of his great friend and counsellor Count Robert of Meulan, who had led the French charge at Senlac^ and who is said to have had no love for Englishmen.* But, if we look into the matter, we shall see thai these words are to be taken in quite another sense from what they would have borne, if it had been said a generation earlier that Bishop Odo or Earl William Fitz-Osbem did not love Englishmen. The complaint afler all is not to be taken quite literally, for some men of English descent in the strictest sense did rise to high places under Henry. And, so far as it is true, we must understand by Englishmen natives of England of whatever race, the sons and grandsons of those who fought under William at Senlac, no less than the sons and grand- sons of those who fought under Harold. In a long list of men pro- moted to high ecclesiastical office under Henry, we find that nearly all are Normans in the local as well as the national sense. Some* times indeed natives of other parts of Gaul were transferred from monasteries beyond the sea to the rule of the great churches of England. The Norman was now beginning to be what the Poite\in and the Savoyard were a hundred years later ; and men bom in the land, of both races alike, began to be jealous of him. Both the good and the bad side of Henry's rule in England touched all natives of England alike ; and all natives of England must have grudged to see * Sec above, p. 67. « Sec Appendix W. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY. lot that their King loved Normandy better than England, that he chose Normandy as his dwelling-place oftener than England, that he pro- moted natives of Normandy rather than natives of England to high offices on both sides Df the sea. At the same time the fame of Eng- land, as a power, was fast growing in foreign lands. The feelings and the manner of speech which had begun under Rufus went on with increased force under Henry. The French wars of Henry were, like the wars of his brother, waged, not for English but for Norman^ interests. Still in French eyes they were English wars; they were largely carried on with English troops, and, in the successes of the King of England, the najue of England and her people were magnified among the men of oth^r 4ands. \ 'Ihlshort; gjeat as isnhe^ituHrec^ in> portance of this reign" in the mteiiial hisfory-Gf'Engla!>d; ks'outwdid - events have chiefly to do with foreign wars and subtle foreign policy. Within the island there is comparatively little to tell. When Henry, like his brother, had crushed one rebellion at the beginning of lus reign, he found England even more tranquil for the rest of his days th£ui his brother had found it. In Normandy he had to deal with a competitor within his own duchy and with a jealous and powerful enemy on his border; in England he had neither to disturb him. t)n the side of Scodand there was a time of unusual peace ; the only enemies within the four seas of Britain were the half-conquered Welsh, ever striving to throw off the yoke in their own land, ever showing themselves as troublesome, if not dangerous enemies, on the English border. But the reign of Henry is set down, with somewhat doubtful truth, as the time of the final conquest of at least the southern part of Wales.^ It was certainly the time when the policy of Henry took one of the wisest steps to secure his conquests in those regions by a systematic plan of colonization. In the eyes of men of his own time, both of his own subjects and of strangers, Henry seemed the most fortunate and the most powerful of princes.* In the eyes of his own subjects, he bore the higher title of the Lion of Justice.^ He was the man whom the national Chronicler, after uttering not a few complaints in detail, could send out of the world with the noblest of panegyrics. " Good man he was, and mickle awe was of him. Durst none man misdo with other on his time. Peace he made for man and deer." And his praises could be wound up with the same old proverbial phrase which we have heard of every King who did justice from the Bretwalda Eadwine onward, that "whoso bare 1 See Giraldos, It. Karab. ii. I (vol. vi. Hunt. 2l8 6. p- 103); Will. Malim. iv. 311, ▼. 401. ' See Appendix X. There is some exaggeration in the phrase, • This title comes from the prophecy of still they mark the reign of Henry as a Merlin in Orderic, 887 D, and Suger, Vit. special epoch in the progress of Welsh Lud. 15 (Duchesne, iv. 295). conquest. Cf. Will. Gem. viii. 31 ; Hen. IC2 THE SORMAX AV.VCS IX ENCLAKD, his burthen, goli and silver, durst none man say to him nought but good." * It is singular that a reign so different in many respects finom the reign that went before it should read in so many of its details like the same ston* ti.>ld again. In the case of Henry, as in the case of Rufus, the King was called to the Crown widi the good will of the English people, and in both he had at once to defend his Crown against Nonnan disloyalty in England and against the assaults of the reigning sovereign of Normandy. Presently, in each case, the internal state of Normandy calls for the intervention of the sovereign of Eng* land, and in each case, though by differert means, England and Normandy are >)gain unucd under n ?fn^ nile^. Each King begins with the same eager ancmpt to draw ;o himself the loyalty of English- men, though it is quite unreasonable to represent the promises of Henry as having been no less utterly trodden under foot than the promises of Rufus. The dispute with Anselm, the exile of the Primate at Rome and Lyons, seem to come over again ; though, on looking more closely into the matter, it will be seen that nearly every detail a eall digelnesse se9 and wat, he seoS })aet man bet \x\ aerme folc mid ealle unrihte aerost man hem berzfo'5 her eahte, and siJj'Son man hem ofslaeS." Yet even such a wail as this does not hinder the Chronicler from sending Henry out of the world with the panegyric which has been already quoted. • Chron. Petrib. 1 124. "Ful hevi gaer waes hit. Se men \t snii god heafde, him me hit beraefode mid strange geoldes and mid strange motes; l^e man ne heafde stearf of hunger.*' These words im- mediately follow the passage just quoted. ^ The grievances of the people at the hands of the King's immediate followers ill the days of Rufus are set forth by Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 94, Who records the re'dress of the grievance. The Chronicler gives a picture of the same kind in the year 1 104. lo6 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. the moneyers who had cheated both him and them by an issue of false coin. In all these cases bodily mutilation was the doom of the offenders, and it may be noticed that, in this generation, we never meet with any feeling against punishments of this kind, if only the sufferers were believed really to be guilty. In fact, in an age which had few gaols, and no penal colonies, it may well have seemed that the best way to deal with a sinner who was not to be put to death was to make him personally incapable of sinning again.^ We read that, in the earlier part of his reign, Henry was most inclined to punishments of this kind, which he afterwards, whether out of humanity or out of avarice, largely commuted for fines in money.* There is another feature of Henry's reign which, though it may be explained in other ways, may well have been connected with this strict administration of justice. I have already remarked that, in a certain sense, the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest, that it finally established the supremacy of the Southern or Saxon part of England over the rest of the kingdom and of the island.' The King of the English was still, before all tilings, a King of the West-Saxons. Save when the needs of warfare called for their presence elsewhere, the two Williams are seldom heard of far from the West-Saxon border, seldom further from it than the old place of assembly at Gloucester, itself in a sense West-Saxon ground. The council held by William Rufus at Rockingham * is a rare case of an assembly held on the other side of the Watling-Street But under Henry we get the beginning of that intense activity on the part of our Kings, that constant moving from place to place, which comes out strongly in many later reigns, and which the Kings of England shared with the German Kings and Emperors. But King Henry is found holding assembhes, and ap- pearing for various purposes, in new ()laces within or near the West- Saxon border.* Oxford is restored to its old honours ; • but it has to share them with Woodstock, once the scene of legislation in the days of iEthelred, and now the place alike of the royal pleasures and the royal studies.'' But we hear of Henry also at places which had never before been heard of as seats of national assemblies, places which, except through the necessities of warfare, had seldom been visited by Kings since England had had one sovereign. He shows himself in * The punishment of the false moneyers • Sec above p. 4a. is recorded by all our authorities, including • See above, p. 9 a. the Contiuuator of Florence under the " See Appendix X. year 1135. Eadmcr (94), and after him • Hen. Hunt. 2206. "Ad pascha [in Florence, mention the earlier case in 1 108. 1134, one of the years for which the See Appendix X. In Rymer (i. 13) we Chronicle has no entry] fuit Rex apod find a writ deitouncing punishments of this Oxinefurd in nova aula." Compare vol. i. kind against offenders in the matter of pp. 350, aSi ; ii. p. 331. the false money. ^ Sec above, p. 103. * Will. Mahiis. v. 4 1 1 . Sec Appendix X, HIS yOURNEYS THROUGH THE KINGDOM, 107 all parts of the kingdom, and the solemn ceremony of wearing the crown is no longer confined to Winchester, Westminster, and Glou- cester. It takes place, especially in the latter years of his reign, at Saint Alban's, at Dunstable, at Brampton, at Northampton, and at Norwich.^ We read how a deputation from his continental dominions found Henry, as a continental embassy had once found iEthelstan, holding his court within the shire of his birth, in the northern metropolis itself.* And once we find him even further still from the old seats of West-Saxon kingship, receiving perhaps the hospitalities of Randolf Flambard in the episcopal casde of Durham,' and pro- viding for the strength of the great border fortress of Carlisle.* Much of this moving to and fro may have had to do with the practice of receiving the proceeds of the royal estates in kind and consuming them on the spot. Much of it may have had to do with the King's love of hunting in the many forests which he so strictly kept for his own pleasure. Still we can well believe that the King who did justice was really led, in part at least, by a wish, like that of -Alfred or Cnut, to see with his own eyes that justice was done in all parts of his kingdom. This was the more needful now that the viceroyalty of the ancient Earls was swept away, so that, except in one or two special palatinates, justice had everywhere to be done by the im- mediate oflScers of the Crown. At all events, the system of royal progresses, of holding assemblies in various parts of the land, is a marked feature of the reign of Henry, and it is one which must have gone far to bring about that more thorough consolidation of the whole kingdom which was one great result of the Norman Conquest. Among the faults attributed to Henry, as well as to his father,^ we find that of avarice, and the charge is accompanied with a picture of money extorted in various unjust ways, but always, it would seem, under some cover of legal right. The cry against the fiscal oppression of Henry's reign goes up almost year after year from the national Chronicler. In one case we distinctly see the national feeling rising up against one of the new-fangled forms of feudal exaction, the demand of an aid on the marriage of the King's daughter. A pitiful picture is drawn of the sufferings which were endured by the poor, and we hear how tvery kind of litigation and accusation was en- couraged which might bring in gain to the royal Exchequer.' More than once in his reign Henry found a strange source of revenue in extorting fines from those priests who still dared to keep wives in spite of the new canons.' In all this we see the further carrying on ' Sec Appendix X. 'See ?ol. iv. p. 421. « Ord. Vit. 874 B. Of. vol. i. pp. 124, • Eadmcr, Hist. Nov. 83. Thii is in t ^3. 1 105, daring Anselm*s absence. ' > Hen. Hoot. 1 123. ^ Eadmer Tu. s) tells this story. The * Sim. Dun. iiaa. King laid a fine on the married clergy, io3 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. of that fiscal spirit which came in under the Conqueror, and which grew under his successors till the main end of government seemed to be the collecting and increasing of the King's revenue.* This was one of the direct results of the Conquest ; it was the bringing in of a wholly new spirit into the administration. In the old times we read of no complaints of exactions in money, except in some such extra- ordinar>' case as the laying on of the Danegeld. Whatever wrongs may have gone on in the days of ^thelred or in any over evil time, we hear nothing of that particular form of unlaw and unright which consisted in abusing the King's authority to wring money out of all classes of the people by every form of vexatious demand. This evil began with the Conqueror ; it went on under the Red King ; il went on under Henr}', and we are told that it was all the more heavily feh under Henry, because, after the exactions of his father and brother, the people had less left to pay.* On the other hand, we hear the praises of Henry sounded on one point on which we should rather have looked for a voice the other way. While the enforcement of the cruel laws of the forest is set down to the bad side of his father's account, it seems to be said rather to the praise of Henry that " peace he made for man and deer." In his love for the chase he enforced the legislation of his father in all its strictness, and he kept up the cruel mutilation, the lowing as it was called, of all dogs in the neighbourhood of the royal forests." But when we read that he kept the right of hunting throughout the whok kingdom in his own hands,* we can perhaps see the explanation of the seeming praise which the Chronicler gives him in this matter. and, when he found that this did not bring in so much as was looked for, he fined them ail round, married and un- married. The Queen was implored to help them, but she was afraid. * This is well brought out by Gneist, Englische Verwaltungsrecht, i. 194. * Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 83. » Ord. Vit. 823 B. C. This brutal practice, on which Sir F. Pnlgravc has something to say (i?. 648), went on long after Henry*s time. It seems to be alluded to in the prophecy of Merlin (Ord. Vit. 887 D) ; " Pedes latrantium truncabuntur. Pacem habebunt ferae, humanitassupplicium dolebit." * This comes out most strongly in Henry of Huntingdon (2216) after Henry's death. Stephen swears that he will not keep other men's woods in his hands, ^'sicut Rex Henricus fecerat, qui singulis annis implacitaverat eos si vel venationem cepissent in silvis propriis, ?el si eas ad necessitates suas exstirparent vel dimino- erent." He adds, "Quod placiti nefkndi genus adeo fuit exsecrabile ut si alknjns lucum quern habere pecuniam sestimarcnt a longe conspicerent, statim vastatnm perhi- berent, sive esset sive non, ut cum immerito redimerent." All this was doubtless no- just and harassing enough, but it most have fallen much more heavily on the great men than on the bulk of the people. William of Newburgh (i. 3) however says, *' Feras quoque propter venatioais dclidas plus justo dtligeiis, in publids animadvcr> sionibus cervicidas ab homicidis pamm discernebat." Wace (15633) gives some curious mocking speeches on Henry's love for the chase, which he puts into the mouth of the younger William of Warren by the corrupt name of " Li Qneni de Waumeri." THE FOREST LA WS. 1 09 The number of men whom the royal monopoly of hunting delivered from the curse of a little Nimrod in every manor ^ would doubless be greater than the number of those who were themselves wronged by the harshness of the laws which fenced in tiie King's own sport. In this, as in all things, we can give Henry the praise — and in some states of society it is no small praise — ^of putting one tyrant in the stead of many. Henry at least taught the highest and proudest of his nobles that there was a power in the land higher than their own. Where he reigned, rebellion and private wars were not rights to be boasted of, but crimes against the law, which the law knew how to punish.' To a King who did this much might be forgiven. Men not only forgave him crimes and vices which touched but few of them ; they forgave him the severity of an administration which now and then confounded the innocent with the guilty ; they forgave him his frequent and heavy demands upon their purses; they forgave him the pursuit of a policy continental rather than English ; they forgave him even a systematic preference for strangers in the disposal of high offices within his island kingdom. All this, and more also, might be forgiven to the King who did justice, the King who made his peace kept throughout his realm, the King in whose days ** none man might misdo with other." It is easy to see what must have been the effect of such a reign as this on the general course of our history. The rule of the Lion of Justice did, as I have already said, much to lessen the gap between the conquering and the conquered race within his kingdom. It did much to fuse together Normans and English, that is to say, in the long run to change Normans into Englishmen. But this was done, not so much by an occasional and ostentatious assumption of English manners and feelings, as by bringing all men, of whatever race and whatever rank, within the grasp of the royal authority. 'We shall see, in another Chapter, how this process worked in detail in those gradual and silent changes in our ancient constitution which the Norman Con- quest in the end brought about. It is enough to say here that many of the later principles of government, many of the doctrines which most tend to exalt the kingly power, may be dated from the reign of ' For this phrase I have to thank the rigoor with which Henry pat down optimist Blackstone — not often the his- breaches of the law of this kind is strongly torian's friend — in the famous passage marked bv a passage in Orderic (805 C) ; where he denounces the ** bastard sl'p **lFonem [deOrentemaisnilio]quoqne,qaia known by the name of the Game Law," guerram in Anglia cceperat, et vicinorum mnd adds, *'the Forest laws established rura suorum incendio combusserat, quod only one mighty huqtcr throughout the in ilia regione crimen est inusitatnm, nee land, the Game laws have raised a little sine grayi ultioiie fit ezpiatum, rigidus Nimrod in every manor." Commentaries, censor accusatum, nee purgatum, ingentis iv. ch. 33. t. 3. pecnnisB redditione oneravit, et plurimo ' The onlawfulneif of private war in angore tribulatum moestificavit." England (see roL H. p. 154) and the no THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Henr>'. The old law and constitution, tliose laws of Eadward which Henr>' restored, were never abolished ; but, as they had been trodden under foot by the brute force of Rufus, so now they were undermined by the subtle policy of rfenr)'. The change from Rufus to Henrj was the change from the fierce impulses of a personal and capricious will to the despotism of a single man, but a despotism working ac- cording to acknowledged laws. In days when the old freedom could no longer be hoped for, such a despotism was a temporary blessing. The reign of law, in whatever shape, succeeded to the reign of brute force. Henry wore the crown of Rufus ; but he used the powers of his crown to put down Robert of Belesme. The two races were brought together in subjection to a common master, to a master whose will was law in more senses of the proverb than one. This common subjection of Normans and English to the kingly power, when the kingly power alone represented law and right, did more than anything else to blend Normans and English into one nation. It paved the way for the dav when that united nation should arise in its strength to assert the supremacy of the law, the sovereignty of the people, when the people had grown up in its renewed being, and when the law was once more, as of old, the maker and the master of the King. On the death of Rufus it was at once seen how vain was the attempt which had been made to settle the succession to the throne of England before it was vacant. Thj agreement by which the Crown was to pass to Robert went for nothing. With the general consent of all men of both races, and with the special good will of the English, the crown passed to the iElheling Henry, the one English-bom mem- ber of the royal house, the only one who was the son of a crowned King.* A momentary refusal to give up the royal treasur>' to Henry seems to have been the only sign that the pretensions of Robert were remembered by a single man.* The ancient forms of an election * Wai. Gem. viii. lo. "Annuentibus cunctis Francis et Aiiglis . . diadeina sus- cepit." Then follows the passage about his royal and English birth qu ted in vol. »^- P- 537- So Ordcric (782 D) ; ** Hunc Angli optavcrunt habere doniinum, quern nobiliter in solio rcgni noverant genitum." So William of Ncwburgh, who at the bc- giiming of the reign of Rufus (sec above, p. 50) sjrmpath'zeJ with the eldest-born, says now (i. 3) that Henry was •'filiorum Willelnii Magni ordine nativitatis novis&i- nius, sed prserogativa primus. Quippe aiiis hi ducatu patris natis, solus ipse ex eodem jam regc est ortu<." » Ordcric (783 C) tells the talc of the resistance of William of Brcteuil, which reminds one of the story of Cesar and Metellus. Henry is *'genuiniis haeres." ** przsens hseres qui mum jus calnmnii* b^tur;" he draws his swurd, *'nec ex- traneum quenilibet per frivoiam procrasti- nationem patris sccptrum praeoccopare pennisit." " Ordcricus Angligena ** cletrly sympathized with his countryman. Wace has (15345) a more singxiUr story, ac- cording to which the crown was forced upon Henry against his will. The Bishopf and Barons come together, seize upon H^nry. and crown him ; "Henris pristrcnt, cil coronerent. Tote la tcrrc il livrercnt.** ELECTION AND CORONATION OF HENRY, III were observed; as soon as Rufus was buried (Aug. 3, iioo), "the Witan that there near at hand were his brother Henry to King chose."* Henry's first act was to show that one of the evil practices of the late reign was at once to come to an end. The churches of England were no longer to be kept without pastors. While still only King-elect, he exercised, as the -fitheling Eadgar had done,^ one royal right by giving a Bishop to the city in which the gathering for his election was held. He bestowed the bishoprick of Winchester on William Giffard.^ Four days after his brother's death (Aug. 5), Henry was crowned at Westminster by Maurice Bishop of London, after he had sworn in the fullest terms to restore the good laws, and to do away with all the unright which had been done in the time of his brother.* On the sime day he put forth the famous charter which was the immediate parent of the Great Charter itself. Its general object was to undo the special wrong-doings of the last reign, and to bring things back to the state in which they had been during the reign of law under the Confessor and the Conqueror. King Henry gave back to his people the laws of King Eadward as amended by King William. On one point alone he was obstinate ; he gave out from the beginning that he would keep the forests in his own hands.* All his other acts were popular. As soon as the men of his kingdom had bowed to him an J sworn oaths and become his men,^ he began his work of reform. By the advice of his Witan, the King punished the chief minister of his brother's unright and unlaw and restored their chief victim. Bishop Randolf of Durham, the dregs of wickedness, was sent to the Tower, the first man recorded to have dwelled as a prisoner in the They cannot wait for Robert, and they cannot du without a King, so ••Hcnris s'en fist asscz pr^icr, Ainz k*il le voulsist otr^ier; Son frere, 90 dist atendreit, Ki de Jerusalem yendreit; Mais li Baron tant le prierent, Plusors tant le cunseiUierent, Ke il fist 90 ke 11 li distreiit £t otreia 90 ke il quislrent." * Chron. Petrib. iioo. "Sy5|)an he bebyrged wtes [>a witan \t ])a neb handa waeron his broCer Heanrig to cyngc ge- curan." So Hen. Hunt. 2166; "Ibidem [apud Wincester] in regem clcctus." * See ?ol. iii. p. 355. » Chron. Petrib. 1 100; Hen. Hunt. 3l6fr. * Chron. Petrib. ib. "Toforan J)am weofode on Westmynstre, Gode and eallan folce behet ealle ^ unriht to aleggenne pe on his bioSer timan wxran, and ]a bctstan lage to healdene J>e on acniges cyiiges daege toforan him stodan. * I shall speak more of Henr/s char- ter elsewhere; its main provisions are summed up by Florence ; *• Legem Regis Eadwardi omnibus in commune reddidit, cum illis emcndationibus quibus pater suus illam emcndnvit [sec vol. iv. p. 216], sed forestas quas ille constituit et habuit, in manu sua retinuit." Henry's French ad- mirer Sug.r (c. 15) brings this out strongly ; "Rex Henricus Guillelmo fratri felicitcr succedens, cum consilio peritorum et pro- borum virorum rcgnum Angliae regno antiquorum Regum gratanter disposuisset, ipsasque regni antiquas consuetudines ad captandam eorum bencvoleutiam jure- jurando firmaret." • Chron. Petrib. 1 100. "Him ealle on )>eosan [ande to abuean and atSas sworan and his man wurdon. ' This is accoiding to the law of io86. Sec vol. iv. p. 472. 113 THE XORMAX KIXGS AV ESCLAXD, Conqueror's fortress.* Anselm was sent for from Lyons.* And, jnet further to uin :he love of the native English, he took a wife who b^ the spindle- side cime of the old kingly line. He had long loved, so we are told. Eadiryih the daughter of King Malcolm and the good Queen Margaret, who lived in England with her aunt Christina, the Abbess of Romsey.' Objections indeed were made to the marriage on the ground that £adsr>'th had not only been an inhabitant of her aunfs monastery, bat had herself actually taken the \x)ws. On the return of Anselm the case was fully heard ; the objections were judged to be null,* and the Primate, who declared the daughter of Malcolm free to marry, presently officiated at the marriage (Nov. ii) and at the coronation of the Queen.* To please Norman ears, Eadgyth had, most likely at the rite of her crowning, to change her English name for the continental Matilda, just as, to please English ears, Emma had once had to change her continental name for English ^Ifgifo.* England had now once more a King bom on her own soil, a Queen of the blood of the hero Eadmund. a King and Queen whose children would trace to ^Elfred by two descents. Norman insolence mocked at the English King and his English Ladv under the English names of Gotiric and Godgifu." * The Chronicler distiDCTly marks that the imprisonment of Randolf Flambard was do::e "be J-arre rxde Jx: him abutan wacran/* For the phrase "Rannulfus nequitiarom fz.x '^ I have to thank William of Malmesbury, r. 393. ' The Chronicler again marks that the embassy to Anselm was sent '*be his witena ratde." * On Christina, see vol. iv. p. 473. * The canonical objections to the mar- riage, the statement made by Eadgyth, and the decision of Anselm that the mar- riage was lawful, arc descritwd at length by Eadmer in the beginning of his third book. His decision was grounded on the decision of Lanfranc in cases of the like kind; see vol. iv. p. 384. A foreign writer, Hermann of Tournay. quoted by Migne in his edition of Eadmer, tells another and le:s aedible story of the way in which an Abbess, seemingly not Chris- tina, shielded Eadgvtb from the violence of Rufus. The s*ory is worth reading, as it gives us a glimpse of the Red King in quite a new character. The Abbess asks him to step into her flower garden and look at her roses. : » The marriage is recorded by all our authorities. Florence marks that the King "majores natu Angliae congi^rit Lundonix** for the purpose of the mar- riage ; and an incidental notice of Eadmer (Hi»t. Nov. 58) lets us see that tbis gathering still kept up at least a snrvinl of the popular character of oar indent assemblies ; ** Pater ipse [Anselmns] toCim regni nobilitatrm populumqae mioocem pro hoc ipso circuniHuentem necoe pro foribus ecclesiae Rrgem et illam circuo- vallantem sublimius cztens stans in con- mune edocuit.'* The Chronider does not omit to notice that the new Qneen was ** of l>an rihtan ^nglalandes kyne kynne." The former love of Henry for Eadgyth ii mentioned by Eadmer, by Orderic, 784 A. William of Malmcsbury, ▼. 393 ; and one phrase of Eadmer (**dum mm a capitis amplexibus reurdaret") might seem to show that the passion was a matual one. The story of Matthew Paris (Hist. Ang L 189), according to which **beata viigo Matilda " had the strongest distaste for tbe marriage, sounds like a romance of the convent. * See vol. i. p. 206. The fact that Matilda had formerly borne the name of F.adgyth comes from Orderic, 702 A, 843 B. ' Witl. Malint.T.394. "OmDrt . . . pibffl MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND EADGYTH. "3 The spirit which prompted this mockery soon showed itself in a jnore dangerous shape. The events of the beginning of Henry's reign read strangely like the events of the beginning of the reign of Rufus over again. Henry, like his brother, was to have his experience of English loyalty and of Norman treason. It is significantly noticed that the crowning of Henry was accompanied by the special applause of the commons.* We presently hear how the head men of the land* conspired a second time to get rid of a King who relied mainly on native English support, and whose title to the Crown was more in- telligible to English than to Norman minds. The object of the con- spiracy was the same as the conspiracy in the days of Rufus. Robert had now come back from the Holy Land, and those who dreaded the stem justice of Henry sought again to transfer the Crown to him. But this time there was hardly anything that could be called open war. Whatever was the feeling of the Norman nobles, the English people stuck faithfully to the King born in their own land. It is significantly said that they knew nothing of the rights of Robert.' His claim could rest only on a doctrine of primogeniture which was unknown to English law, and on an agreement with the late King by which the rights of the nation were bartered away. The mercenary soldiers too, of whatever race, clave to King Henry.* He was likely to be a far more regular paymaster than the spendthrift Robert. The Bishops were faithful to the King whom they had just hallowed. The zeal of the holy Anselm even went so far that he appeared at the head of the men of his lands,* ready to play the part of Leofric and -^Ifwig against the new Norman invader.' Both the elements of military strength, the /yrd and the here^ together with the power of the Church, were arrayed on Henry's side. Against such an union the Norman Duke and a handful of Norman nobles had no chance. The King's forces waited for a third landing at Pevensey, but Robert, having won over some contmneliis domiDum inurere, Godricum cum et comparem Godgivam appcUantes." * Will. Malms, r. 393. "Certaiim pbusQ plebeio concrepante, in Regcm coro- lutns est." • ChroD. Petrib. iioi. "Bona Jwr- xfter wurdoo )>a heafodmen her on lande wiSeiraeden togeanei jam cynge." The Cbronkler does not, as in io8ct, say that they were Frenchmen, though they doubt- less were. (See Appendix W.) Cf. Will. Malms. V. 594; Hen. Hunt. 2166; Ord. Vit. 786 B ; Will. Gem. viii. i a. ' The loyalty of the English is especially asserted by Florence, iioi ; William of Maknesbury, r. 395 ; Orderic, 786 B, 787 B; in which lat'.er place his words VOL. V. 1 are, " Omnes quoque Angli, alterius prin- cipis jura ncscientes, in sui Regis fidelita'e perstiterunt, pro qua certamen inire satis optaverunt." Cf. Will. Gem. viii. 12. On the version of these events in Matthew Paris and Thierry, see Appendix Y. * The " milites gregarii " are mentioned by Florence along with the Bishops and the English. * Both William of Malmesbury and Ordrric witness to the zeal of Anselm in the King's cause, but it is from his own biographer (59) that we learn the curious fact of his personal presence with the army; "Circa Regem fideliter cum suis in expeditione excul>abat pater Anselmus.** * See vol iii. p. J85. 114 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. part of the English fleet, landed at Portsmouth (Aug. i, iioi).* No battle however followed. According to one account,* Robert now showed one of his occasional acts of generosity by decUning to attack the city of Winchester, where his sister-in-law and god-chUd, Queen Matilda, was tarrying after the birth of her first child. This kind of thoughtfulness for a single person of exalted rank is quite in the sfnrit of chivalry ; a more reasonable spirit might, before undertaking a war of personal aggression, have stopped to think whether the prize was worth the harm which was sure to light on many innocent persons of all ranks. But presently, by the advice of the great men on both sides, among whom Anselm and Robert of Meulan are specially mentioned,' the brothers came to an agreement. Robert gave up h^ claims on the Crown, he acknowledged his brother's royal ^gnitj, and released him from the tie of personal homage, contracted doubt- less when Henry first received his fief of the C6tentin. That fief, and his other continental possessions, save only his faithful and cherished Domfront, Henry now gave up to Robert. Robert was further to have a pension of three thousand marks yearly, and, as in the old agreement between Robert and Rufus, if either brother died without lawful heirs, the surviving brother was to succeed to his dominions.* The campaign of Rochester, in the second year of Rufus, was the last year in which Englishmen and Normans, as Englishmen and Normans, met in arms on English soil. The campaign of Ports- mouth, if campaign it can be called, in the second year of Henry was the last time when, though Englishmen and Normans did not actually meet in battle on English soil, they at least stood in arms face to face. England had won herself a King ; and under that King her forces were soon to go forth to the conquest of Normandy. But before he could stretch forth his hands to conquests beyond sea, Henry had to get firm possession of his kingdom at home. Various traitors and enemies had to be got rid of, not suddenly, we are told, but one by one, and that as King Henry knew how to get rid of men, either by process of law^ or, in case of open rebellion, by force of * The treason of some of the " Butse- carli*' is mentioned by the Chroni- cler and by Henry of Huntingdon. Flor- ence adds that Robert won them over " consilio RannulH episcopi/' which seems odd, as Flambard was then in the Tower. * Wace, 1545a. "Pasja mer, vint a Porecestre, D'iloc ala prendre Wincestre; Maiz Ten li dist ke la Reine Sa serorge esleit en g^sine, Ft il dist ke vilain sereit, ' Ki dame en g^sine assaldreit.'^ » Eadmer (Hist. Nov. 49) is emphatic on the services of Anselm at this time, and he goes so far as to say, "si post gratiam Dei fidelitas ct industria Don intcr- cessisset Anselmi, Henricus Rex ea tempes- tate perdidisset jus AngUci regni." Wil- liam of Malmesbury (v. 395) and Ocderic (787 C) tell us of Robert of Meulan. * The terms of the treaty, as before (see above, p. 57), come out most fiilly in the Chronicle. The Continpator of Wil- liam of Jumioges (viii. 13) raises the money to 4000 marks. ^ This comes ont in the opedng of ROBERT'S INVASION OF ENGLAND. "5 arms. In short, the men who were powerful and dangerous, the great Earls and chiefs whose names stand foremost in Domesday, were to make way for a new race of men who owed their greatness to the King himself.^ Foremost among the rebels was the fierce Robert of Belesme, who again (1102) openly waged war against his sovereign. But it was in vain that he built himself castles and made a league, like his predecessor Eadwine,' with his British neighbours. The cruel son of Roger and Mabel learned the truth that in England no one man could stand against the King;^ his castles were taken, his Welsh allies were bribed to disperse, and the Earl himself had to leave his English possessions and to content himself with what he held in Normandy and France.* The fall of another noble of almost equal power followed before long. William of Cornwall and Mortain, who had further succeeded his uncle Odo in the earldom of Kent, was driven out by a judicial sentence (1104).* These men indeed went to swell the strength of resistance against Henry in Normandy ; but the meshes of Henry's craft were steadily drawing closer round the eldest-borii of the Conqueror. Duke Robert paid more than one visit to England, in one of which he found it convenient to give up his pension, under the guise of making a present of it to the Queen.* But the wealth of Henry, and the wretched misgovernment, or rather no-government, of Robert, stirred up enemies against him throughout his duchy.' Two campaigns (1105-1106), separated by one of Robert's fruitless visits to England, brought Normandy into the hands Ordcric's eleventh book (804 B, C). He mentioos the familiar names of Robert M alet and Ivo of Grantmesnil, and adds, **ad jndiciam summonnit, nee simul sed icparatira, variisque temporfbus et multi- roodis Tiolatx fidei reatibus implacitavit.** Fine, confiscation* banishment, are the penalties. > See abore, p. T05. • See vol. ii. p. .^25 ; iv. p. 12 1. • See Will. Malms, iv. 306. • The war with Robert of Belesme is recorded in the Chronicle, 1 102 (the men- tion of the Welshmen comes from Flor- ence), Will. Malms, v. 396, more briefly in Henry of Huntingdon, 2 1 7, and fullest of all in the Shropshire man Orderic, 806- 808. He gives us the names of the Welsh princes, Cadwgan and Oruffydd, sons of Rhys. The English followers of the King come out strongly in his narra- tive, but I think I discern an English Wulfgar in •• Ulgerius venator," a captain of mercenaries under Robert of Belesme. Robert of Belesme appears again as a visitor in England in the winter of 1105- I106. * See the Chronicle and Florence, T 104, and more fully in William of Malmesbury, ▼• 397. • Chron. Petrib. and Flor. Wig. 1 103. The mention of the Queen comes from Orderic. 805 A ; Will. Malms, iv. 389 ; v. 395. The story is told at great length by Wacc (15688 et scq.). The calm wisdom of Robert of Meulan plays a chief part in the story. ^ Will. Malms, v. 398. But the most graphic accounts come from Orderic (786 B), though they are put somewhat earlier. William of Newburgh goes so far as to say (i< 3)* "Invitatus a majoribus ejusdem provinciae Rex Henricus civili magis animo quam hostili affiiit." The fullest account of the war is that given by Wace (15950 et seq.), who naturally enlarges in a special way on the hXt of his own city of Bayeux, but he mixes different campaigns together. See Pluquet*s note, ii. 204. I 2 Tl6 THE KORMAK KIKGS IN ENGLAND. of Henry. Beneath the walls of Count Willi2an's castle of Tmcbebrai the fate of Nonnandr ^-as decided (Sept. 28, 1106). Robert of Belesme escaped br flight for a season; a crowd of names even prouder than his. Count \Villi2tm the lord of the castle, the .£tlieling Eadgar, Duke Robert himself, became the piisoners of Henry. William of Mortain, the nephew of the Conqueror, whose father's castle had risen within the walls of Anderida, spent the rest of his days in bonds, some said in blindness.' Eadgar had but lately left the King again to attach himself to his former friend and fellow-crusader.' He now, after so many ups and downs of life, was again spared, again left to spend the rest of his long life in harmless obscurity.' Robert himself, who had refused the crown of Jerusalem * and had twice failed of the crown of England, lived on till the year before the end of the long reign of his brother. For twenty-eight years (11 06-1 134) he was a prisoner, moved from castle to castle at his brother's wiD, but still treated, so at least his brother professed, with all the deference and courtesy which his rank and his misfortunes might daim.' The native Chronicler sends up his wail at the sorrows which Eng- land had to bear through the money uTung from her people to pay the cost of the conquest of Normandy.* Yet we can hardly doubt that English national feeling found a subject for rejoicing in the event of the day of TinchebraL That fight was more worthy of the name of a pitched battle than any fight that England or Normandy had seen since the great days of Stamfordbridge and Senlac. And men might deem that at Tinchebrai the wergild of the men who died at Senlac began to be paid back. Englishmen had t^ice beaten back the Norman from their own shores; they had now overthrown the Norman on his oun soil. A Xing of the English, raised to his throne by the voice of the English people, a King who won his victor)' fighting on foot like an Englishman at the head of English- men," had made Normandy his own by force of arms, and had brought back the Duke of the Normans a prisoner to his own island. An historian who shared the blood of both nations * dwells on the fact > The captivitj of WOUaxn of Mortain is mentioDed bj aO onr authorities. Od his alleged bIiD£n|[. tee Appouliz X. ' Chroa. Petrib. 1 106. ' See William of Malmesboxy, iii. 251. Eadgar was dearij alive when he wrole. • WilL Malms, ir. 389, where sie Sir T. D. Hardv's note. • Sec ApJMnliz Z. • Sec under the years 1 104, 1 105. ^ Tkus dear case of an iuflueoce of £ng- lidi practice on Norman military tactics is maxked by Orderic, 821 A ; ** Rex Anglos et Normannos secom pcdites detuunLT Bnt from Henry of HontingdoQ (ai7]b who gives the Old-EngUsh reasoo (see tgL i. p. 183 ; iii. p. $15). it would seem that Robert also adopted the same tactics; ** Rex et dux et acies cctene pedites crant at constantios pagnarent.** The horse on Henry^s side were the Bretons and the mco of Maine under Helias. * William of Malmesbnry ays of him- self in his preface to the third book, ** Ego otrinsque gentis tangiiincm tnho.** HENRY'S CONQUEST OF NORMANDY. "7 that forty years, even to the self-same day, after the Normans had set forth at Pevensey for the conquest of Engliuid, Normandy itself be- came a land subject to England.^ So in a sense it was. Things were not yet as they were to be in the days of the Angevins, when Normandy and England alike seemed merged in the vast dominion which stretched from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. England was the kingdom, and Normandy was the province. It was a province won in open war by a King of the English, at the head of men, many of whom were doubtless English by blood and all of whom were English by allegiance. King Henry, like his namesake three hundred years later, came back as a conqueror to England, to spend some years in enforcing the peace of his kingdom, in setding ecclesiastical disputes, and, after a season (1112), to win the good will of England and of mankind by sending Robert of Belesme to a life-long dungeon. As things stood between the two brothers, Normandy could hardly have failed to fall sooner or later to the lot of the stronger of the two. And great, we cannot doubt, was the immediate gain to the conquered country, through the change from the no-rule of Robert to the strict and watchful police of Henry.' But the reunion of England and Normandy under a single sovereign was by no means a source of unmixed good to either country. For England, after the rebellion of Robert of Belesme had been put down, the reign of Henry, as far as peace at home and abroad were concerned, was more than a return to the days of the peaceful Eadgar. Within his island realm the life of King Henry and the security of his government were threatened but once, and that only by a conspiracy formed by a traitor among his own servants.' Scotland was friendly ; it was only on the side of 405) speaks of Lewis as an aUy of Henry in the conquest of Normandy ; " comiptns videlicet Anglonim spoliis et multo regis obryzo." * This story is told by William of Malmesbury, v. 411. He speaks of the traitor as *'qaidam cubicularius, plebeii generis patre, sed pro regiorum thesaurorum custodia famosi nominis homine, natns." One wishes to know the names of these men, seemingly court officers; bat all that we can get is an initial in Suger (c. 21), where the criminal appears as '*H. nomine, familiarium intimus. Regis liberali- tate ditatus, potens et famosus, famosior proditor." Suger goes on to mention hit punishment, the usual one of mutilation, with the comment, *' quum laqueum suifo- cantem meruisset, misericorditer est dam- natus." He speaks also of Henry's fears in the same style in which those of Crom- well are commonly spoken of» > Will. Malms, v. 398. "Idem dies ante quadraginta circiter annos fuerat, cum Willelmus Hastingas primus appulit ; pro- vido forsitan Dei judicio ut eo die subdere- tor Angliz Normanni, quo ad earn sub- jugandam olim yenerat Normannorum copia." So William of Newburgh (i. 3) ; ** Henricus regno Anglix socians ducatum Normannias, sicut pater olim ducatui Normanniae regnum sociayerat Angliae, nomen celebre et grande adeptus est, juxta nomen magnorum qui sunt in terra.'' • The restoration of good order in Nor- mandy is strongly set forth by Ordcric, 821 D. In the usual formula, he restored the laws of William the Conqueror; "pa- temas leges renovavit." Suger (c. 1 5) sets forth the vigour of Henry's Norman government very strongly, but adds that he was "fretus domini Regis Francorum anxilio." So William of Mahnesbury (v. Il8 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Wales that wars or rumours of wars were heard of. But in Normandj things were in a very diflferent case. Whether Henry preferred Eng- land to Normandy or. not, it is certain that the afifairs of his duchy often called for his presence, and thus led to long absences from his kingdom. Through a long part of his reign, he had dangerous enemies both within Normandy and on its borders. Robert, in the course of his return from the East, had married Sibyl of Conversana in the Norman lands of Italy, a woman who is described as far fitter to rule his duchy than he was himself.^ Her early death left him with a young son William, whose claims to Normandy, if not to England* — though within England they clearly were never heard of — were zealously asserted by a strong party in Normandy, and were foond a convenient handle by the jealous over-lord of the duchy. Constant wars, both with rebellious Normans and with the King of the French, fill up a large space in the annals of Henry's reign. They are wars moreover in which, as at Tinchebrai, engagements which have some right to be called pitched battles do something to diversify the weari- some record of endless petty sieges and skirmishes. Thus the rivalry between France and England which began under Rufus went on under Henry. And, thus early in the strife, Henry turned to the natural ally of England in such a struggle, to the aJly with whom in after days we shared in defeat at Bouvines and in victory at Waterioo. Close alliance with Germany, the old policy of England, the policy of -fithelstan, Cnut, and Harold, was no less the policy of the first King of the stranger dynasty who had the least claim to be looked on as an Englishman. In his dealings with France, both in peace and in war, Henry had to deal with a far abler and more active rival than his brother had ever had to deal with, or than his father had had in his later years. The accession of Lewis the son of Philip the First (1109), whom we have already heard of in the wars of Rufus,'^ marks an epoch in the history of the French monarchy. The new King betook himself actively to establishing the kingly authority within the small part of his nominal kingdom which formed the actual domain of his Crown.* * On the marriage of Robert and Sibyl name " Clito " to a son of the King of the see Orderic, 780 A, 784 B, and her death French. in 810 A, which is differently told by ' See above, p. 67. He appears in the William of Malmcsbury, iv. 389. See her Chronicle as " Lo"5ewi8." Orderic gives panegyric in the Continuator of William of him, as he does several other princes, a Juroi^ges, viii. 14. double name, "Ludovicus Tedbaldns;" ■ He is several times called " Clito " by but in his Life by Suger he is simply Orderic (838 B). ••Clito" is of course "Ludovicus." equivalent to -flEtheling ; but Orderic seems * All the earlier chapters of his Life by to make a distinction between the " Clito/' Suger are mainly taken up with de- son of Robert, and the *' Adelinus," son of scribing his exploits against various re- Henry. He also once at least applies the fractory nobles, especially the oppressors REIGN OF LEWIS THE SIXTH IN FRANCE, 119 And, as a balance to the power of the turbulent nobles which he was seeking to overthrow, he was glad to encourage the rising spirit of freedom, and to give the royal sanction to the formation of communes which supplied him with a civic militia in his wars. The seed which had been sown at Le Mans a generation earlier * was now bearing fruit in France and other parts of Gaul; and the Bishops, no less than the King, found it their interest to encourage the new spirit." In France, in short, just as in England at the moment of Robert's landing, the King, the Church, and the people were leagued together against an oppressive nobility. But from this point, the course of the two countries parted oflf in different ways. In France, the Kings used the people against the nobles as long as it suited their purpose, and in the end brought nobles, people, and clergy into one common bondage. In England, the growth of a despotic power in the Crown was checked by the union of nobles, clergy, and people in a cause concunon to I hem all. This strengthening of the power of the French JKing within his own dominions was naturally accompanied by in- creased vigour in the relations of the Crown to the princes who CDwed it a nominal homage. The reign of Lewis the Fat may be set down as the beginning of that gradual growth of the Parisian snaonarchy which in the end swallowed up all the states which owed mt homage,' besides so large a part of the German and Burgundian 'Swingdoms. With such a power growing up on his continental frontier, it was liardly possible that Henry, in his character of master, if not formally lEhike,* of Normandy, should fail to come into collision.* The two Kings had once been personal friends. Lewis had sought shelter in England when his step-mother was plotting against him; he had been received with the highest honours, and, it would almost seem, bad become the man of the English King.* But such ties counted for of the churches. Ordcric too (836 A, B) enlarges on the vigour of Lewis against the •* tyrannis przdouum ct seditiosonim." He began while his father was alive. A specimen of the kind of men with whom he had to deal is described at length by Suger, c. a I. Cf. the account of the same man in Henry of Huntingdon, De Contemptu Mundi, Ang. Sac. ii. 698. » See vol. iv. p. 373. • Orderic (836 B), just after the pas- sage last quoted, goes on, ** Aux ilium to- tam per Galliam deposcere coactus est episcoporum. Tunc ergo communitas in Francia popularis statuu est a praesulibus, ut presbyteri comitarentur Regi ad ob- sidionem vel pugnam cum vexillis et parochianis omnibus." So Suger (c. 18). describing one of Lewis's campaigns, says incidentally, **cum communitates patriflB parochiarum adessent." ' Of course with the exceptions made in vol. i. p. 105. * Lappenberg (300) remarks that Henry did not take the title of Duke of the Normans during his brother's lifetime. It is however given to him by others, as by Suger, c. 21. * William of Malmesbury (v. 404) re- marks that there was no strife between Philip and Henry, because Henry's small possessions in Normandy marched rather on Britanny than on France. * See Ord. Vit. 81 a D ; Sim. Dun. i loi. 120 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. little when Lewis sat on the throne of his father, and when Normandy was in the hands of Henry. A dispute about the border fortress of Gisors, and the enmity between King Lewis and Theobald of Chartres, the nephew of Henry, the son of his renowned sister Adela,* led to two years of war (1111-1113) early in the reign of Lewis.* The war is told us in some detail, and we read of a characteristic refusal of the English King to jeopard political and military advantages by the chivalrous folly of meeting his rival in single combat on a dangerous bridge.' It is more remarkable to find the Counts of Flanders arrayed throughout these wars as the allies of France and the enemies of Fig- land. The Conqueror and Robert the Frisian had indeed been con- stant enemies ; * but with Robert of Jerusalem, the son of the Frisian, Henry had, early in his reign (1103, 1108-1111), concluded two treaties of strict alliance.* Little actually came of these treaties; but they are highly important in the history of the diplomatic art, and they illustrate the feudal notions of the time. In them, for the first time, England appears as granting subsidies to a foreign power in exchange for help in time of war. But in those days a subsidy took the form of a feudal grant. Count Robert took King Henry's money ; but he look it in fee, and he was to do military service in return. He thus became in some sort the man of his pay-master ; but he was already the man of two other lords, one of them the very prince against whom he was most likely to be called to act. The Count of Flanders was a vassal both of the Emperor and of the King of the French, and in his new engagements he takes care to reserve his allegiance to both his earlier lords. The worst case of all, the case of the King of the French calling on his Flemish vassal to join in an invasion of England, is specially provided for. If this should happen, the Count of Flanders is not to refuse to perform his feudal duty ; but he is to take care that its performance shall do as little harm as possible to his new ally, provided always that he is not himself to run any risk of forfeiting the fiefs which he holds of the French Crown. We could not wish for a better illustration of the strange complications which arose out of the reckless way in which men in those days bound themselves by three or four inconsistent engagements at once.* But, ' See vol. iv. p. 442. Suger, who alone mentions the quarrel * The Chronicler, after recording the about Gisors, begins in c. 15. The succession of Lewis in iic8, adds, "and account in Orderic, 836-842, is rather wurdon sySSon manege gewinn betwux confused in its chronology. J)am cynge of France and )>am of Englc- • This story is told at large by Suger. lande, J>a hwile ])e he on Normandig He does not scruple to say (c. 15), "quod wunode." But the war itself coes not Rex Ludovicus, tarn levitate ["avec un begin till 11 11, when Henry is recorded coeur leger*'] quam audacia appetebat." as going beyond sea, ** for uusehte ))e wiff * See vol. iv. pp. 366, 466. him hsefdon sume be ])am gemacran of * See Appendix AA. France." The history of this war in • See vol. iii. p. 167, DEALINGS WITH FRANCE AND FLANDERS, 131 before the French war actually broke out, all this had changed. Quarrels had arisen between Henry and Robert, and now the force of Flanders was ranged on the side of France, and two successive Counts lost their lives in the war with England. Robert himself was killed in this stage of the struggle.' He was succeeded by his son Baldwin, who followed the same policy. Maine too, after the death of Helias, furnished another ground of dispute between Henry and Fulk of Anjou.* Helias had been the firm friend of Henry, and had had a large share in his victory at Tinchebrai. But, now that his rights had passed to the Angevin house,' Maine had become a land hostile to Normandy and England. And Fulk soon found means to stir up another adversary ag^nst Henry. Duke Robert's young son, William, Clito at least, if not -fitheling, had been, after the victory of Tinchebrai, put by his victorious uncle under the care of his brother-in-law Helias of Saint Saen. As if faith and valour were inherent in the prophetic name, Helias showed the same zeal for the son which he had before shown for the father.* He led his young charge through all lands, hoping to find some among the princes of Gaul who would take up the cause of the disinherited and worse than orphan child. But his hopes were presently brought for a while to an end by a general peace. A treaty was concluded at Gisors (i 113), on terms highly favourable to Henry, terms which seem to go so far as to forestall the more famous treaty of Bretigny, and to make the lord of England and Normandy an absolutely independent power on the mainland.^ The Breton Count Alan Fergant had already done homage to Henry, who gave his natural daughter Matilda in marriage to Alan's son Conan.* Fulk of Anjou also did homage to Henry for Maine, and he betrothed his daughter Matilda to Henry's son the jEtheling William, to whom, either now or at the time of the actual marriage, he granted as his daughter's dower the county for which he had himself just become the man of his son-in-law's father.' These arrangements were confirmed by the over-lord King Lewis in terms which might seem to imply that he parted with all his rights over the ^ His death is recorded by the Chroni- cler, 1 1 1 1 ; Orderic, 837 C. ■ The Chronicler (nil) makes the affair oi Maine the chief ground of Henry's warfare in France; "swiffost for ))am eorle of Angeow Jw )>a Mannie togeanes him heold." • See abore, p. 70. • See abore, p. 56. • It will be remembered that by the Bretigny treaty Edward the Third on the one hand gare op his claim to the Crown of France, and oo the other was freed from all homage for Aquitaine and the other continental dominions which he held. The terms of the peace of Gisors are given most at length by Orderic, 841, 842. • Ord. Vit. 841 D. "Homo Regis Anglomm jam faclus fuerat." Cf. Will. Gem. viii. 29. 7 Ord. Vit. 841 B. Cf. Will. Malms. ▼. 419, and Gesta Consulum, D'Achery, iii. 264, in both of which places the grant of Maine to young William is spoken of. 122 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, lands which tliiis came under Henry's supenority. Lewis also ceded to Henry the border-land of Belesme.* The lord of that border-land was already a prisoner. It would seem that, even after his overthrow at Tinchebrai, he had been again reconciled to Henry, that he had again offended him by disobedience and treason of various kinds, and that he had at last fallen into the hands of the King whom he had so deeply wronged. The circumstances of his arrest are not very clear; according to a version which is put into the mouth of Lewis himself, Robert had taken shelter with the King of the French, he had been sent by him as an ambassador to his other lord, and the law of nations had not been foimd strong enough to protect him against the justice or the vengeance of Henry." At all events, in the year before the peace, the career of the cruel son of the cruel Mabel was brought to an end. The common enemy of mankind was brought from Nor- mandy to safer keeping in England, and was, to the delight of all men, thrown into the bonds from which he was never to be freed.* Four years of peace now followed, during which Henry strove to strengthen himself against the time when war should break out again by forming a close alliance with the reigning Emperor. About the time of the beginning of the war (mo), Henry had betrothed his daughter, then a mere child, to King Henry of Germany. She was at once sent to her new home, and in the space between the first and second wars (Jan. i, 1114) she was solemnly married and crowned at Mainz.* Her husband was now Emperor. It was the first time that a woman of English birth had been the bride of Caesar ; for Eadgyth and Gun- hild in former times both died before their husbands reached the Imperial dignity. But, as in all these cases, no English Queen or Empress was fated to be the mother of an Emperor ; the one Emperor who was the son of an English mother. Otto the son of * Ord. Vit. 841 D. * The imprisonment of Robert of Belesme in 1112 is recorded by all our authorities. William of Malmesbury (v. 398) and Orderic (841 A, 858 D) give details, but Orderic has two versions which it is not ver}' easy to reconcile with one another. ' It was never known when he died. See Hen. Hunt. De Contcmptu Mundi, Angl. Sacr. ii. 698. * Cf. Orderic. 838 B, and the Con- tinuator of William of Jumi(?ges, viii. 11, with the more accurate date in Florence, 1 1 10. Cf. Chron. Petrib. 1 1 1 3. For the marriage see Otto of Freising, vii. 15, and especially Ekkehard (Pertz, vi. 247), who dwells on the vast numbers of great men who were assembled at the marriii ge, and says of Matilda, **Erat progenita ex ntraqne parte ex longa linea magnifies nobilitatis et regalis prosapiae, in cnjus ioquela et opere resplendebat specimen futurae bonitatis abunde, adeo ut omnibus optaretur Ro- mani imperii heredis mater fore." It is recorded in good Nether-Dutch in the Liineburg Chronicle (Pertz, xri, 76); "Keiser Heinric bot do cncn hof to Megenze, dar nam he to wive des koainges docnter van Englelant de was g^etco Mechtild, dar makede he se to keiscrione.** At this point (1109, iiio) the Chroaickr calls Henry simply " se cascre," Later, in Iia6 and 1127 (as before in 1 106), be appears by the stranger descriptions of " le kasere Heanri of Loherenge " (cf. vol. i. p. 406), and " se casere of Scxiande." MARRIAGE OF MATILDA WITH THE EMPEROR, "3 Henry the Second's daughter Matilda, was not the son of an Imperial father. The real name of the new Empress seems to have been one of the names sprung from the old c^l root ;^ but she must, like her mother, have changed her name at her marriage. She is known in history by the name of Matilda, a name venerable in German as well as in Norman ears, as being the name of the renowned mother of Otto the Great.* The marriage was, according to the new feudal ideas, made the excuse for a heavy exaction of money, an aid, as the feudal lawyers call it, of which the native Chronicler bitterly com- plains.' The closest alliance followed between the English King and his Imperial namesake and son-in-law. It is even hinted that Henry of Germany took Henry of England as his model of government, and that he specially sought to imitate him in the success with which he contrived to wring money out of his people.* Henry the Fifth held the Imperial power high in his Italian realm ; but in Germany he had, like other Kings, to strive against rebels, and, in the very year which followed his marriage, he suffered a defeat at the hands of the revolted Saxons.* He may well have envied the perfect peace which his father-in-law kept in the island realm, and the revenues which he drew from it to overcome or to buy over his foes elsewhere. But the German King had learned one piece of wisdom from the experience of other princes who had taken wives of Norman descent Some of the courtiers of Henry of England who followed in the suite of the bride seemed to have thought that they might find an occasion of establishing themselves in Germany and the Empire generally, in the same way in which the marriages of Emma in England and Sichel- gauda in Apulia had led the way for bringing both those lands under Norman dominion. The King and princes of Germany saw through their schemes, and sent them away, with honourable treatment indeed, bat without giving them any hope of setting up a Norman dominion or Norman influence in yet another land.' ' Her name is not mentioned by the Chronicler at the time of Tier marriage, bat she appears as **^{$elic" in 1137. By John fA Hexham she is called ** Aaliz " in 1 139 (X Scriptt. 266), and " Adela" in 1 143 (X Scriptt. 269). • See ToL ii. p. 193. » Chron. Petrib. 11 10. "Dis wacs swilSe gedeodsum gear her on lande, ^rh eyld )w se cyng nam for his dohter * Otto of Freising, just before the death of Henry in 11 25, has the yery curious entry {y\\. 16), "Omnibus bene compositis, coBsilio generi sui Regis An- glonuD, totum regnum vectigale facere ▼olens, multum in se optimatum odium contraxit." * See Conrad of Ursperg, 1 1 15, and more fully in the Halberstadt Chronicle in Leibnitz, ii. 133. * This comes out in a remarkable passage of Orderic (838 D) ; " Rogerius filius Ricardi aliique plurei ex Nomiannis comitati sunt, et per banc copulam Ro- manum apicem conscendere putavenint, atque dignitates optimatum audacia seu feritate su&, sibi aliquando adipisci cupi- erunt. Sic niminim antecessores eorum in Anglia per Emmam Ricardi ducis filiam dominati sunt, et in Apulia per Sichel- gaudam Guaimalchi ducis Psalemitani 124 THE NOkMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. When the war broke out again, its cause or occasion arose out of the claims of \\'illiam the Clito^ the son of the captive Duke Robert. During the time of peace Henry had done his best to secure Ibe succession of his own son the vfitheling William, by making all tk chief men of Xormandy do homage to him.^ This perhaps unwilling homage may have had some share in bringing about a movement among the Norman nobles on behalf of the other Williajn. The cause of the Clito was taken up by King Lewis, who was again ill- disposed towards Henry, through the never-ending grudge between him and Henry's nephew Theobald*^ Count Baldwin of Flanders was also, like his father, specially zealous on behalf of the Clito (in6- II 17); but this source of help was soon cut off, as Baldwin died of A wound received in one of his first campaigns against Henry (1118- 1 119).' He was succeeded in Flanders by his nephew Charles (11 19- 1 1 27), the son of the canonized Cnut of Denmark, who foUcwed another line of policy, and kept the peace towards England and Nor- mandy.* The war lasted four years, and in the course of it Henry lost both his Queen, who was at least a tie between him and his native English subjects, and also the man who was their bitterest enemy, his chief counsellor Count Robert of Meulan (1118)." The war which Henry now waged (1116-1120), largely with English troops,* against the rebellious nobles of Normandy and his enemies on the Norman Ixjrder was full of incidents of the usual kind, of sieges and skirmishes. Among these comes the tale of the defence of Breteuil by Henry's daughter Juliana against her father, which has been already quoted as an illustration of Henry's personal character.^ It is plain that, in this kind of warfare, Henry was often hard pressed by his own rebels as well as by his more lawful enemies.' But the filiam super geminos haercdes furuerunt. Hsec siquidem vafer Imperator, qui plura perscrutatus est, agnovit, et alienigenas indebiti fast us cervici suae imponere prae- cavit. Undc consultu Gcrmanorum omnes, datis muncribus, ad propria remisit." ^ Chron. Pet rib. 11 15. * Chron. Petrib. 1 1 16. The Chronicler does not mention the Clito at this stage, but a h'st of his partisans in Normandy is given by Orderic, 843 C. Sec also Hen. Hunt. 2176. 3 See the details in Ordcric, 843 D; Will. Malms, v. 403 ; Chron. Petrib. 1 118, 1 1 19; Hen. Hunt. 218. • The Chronicler marks Charles as the son of Cnut; see vol. iv. pp. 466, 468. On the reign of Charles see also Orderic, 844 A; Will. Gem. viii. 16; Will. Malms, iii. 257i ▼. 4031 of which passages the former was written during Charies's life- time. ^ See the Chronicle in anno; Orderic, 843 B; Will. Malms, v. 4x8, who gives Matilda's panegyric; Hen. Hunt, a 1 8. • Ord. Vit. 843 D. "Quia fJerosqne Normannorum suspectos habuit, stipendi- arios Britones et Anglos cum apparatn coptoso constituit." So 847 C; "Nor- mannos et Anglos aliosque multos regali jure adscivit.'* He adds one of the many complaints of the heavy taxation caused by the war. What is the meaning of the odd story in the Bermondsey Annals (11 18)? "Rex Hcnricus salvatur a leooi- bus in somno per sanctitatem primi prions Petrei sibi apparentis, virtute Dei6ca dum vixit.** ^ See above, p. 104. ' See the emphatic words of the Chrooi* cle, 1 1 18. PVA/: OF IVILLIAM CLITO, 1^6 as not confined to petty actions of this kind. It was marked least one fight which the small numbers on both sides will ' allow us to call a pitched battle, but which was ennobled in l^es of the time by the presence of the two Kings in person, met at Noyon on the little river Andelle, on the borders of the of Lions, the chief seat of Henry's silvan pleasures on the ind.^ As at Tinchebrai, we seem to be reading the record of nglish victory. The hosts are opposed under the names of h and English ; the royal standard — ^we are not told its device — ome by a man of English descent, the younger Eadward of ury ; and again the King of the English fights on foot like an >hman, at the head of his immediate following.^ But the tale ells us how the fantastic notions of chivalry, unknown in an • generation to Normans and Englishmen alike, had now begun luence men's thoughts and actions. Our admiring historian IS how the steel-clad knights, seeking only for glory and for the of the Church and of the land, abstained from the needless ing of Christian blood.' It is more certain that the influence of stom of ransoming prisoners was beginning to have its effifect. Leuis himself was let go by a peasant who acted as his guide, lio knew not the money value of his prisoner.* It was but a tic courtesy when King Henry sent back the horse of King , and when William the ^theling sent back the horse of William lito,^ who had that day for the first time fought the arms of iiood.* But we may see real generosity, or perhaps the higher is battle is recorded by the Chroni- 119, and is described in great >y Ordcric, 853-855, and from point of yiew by Suger, 303- Vlatthew Paris also (Hist. Ang. i. las a glowing account, in which I Crispin, who attacks the King Ily, is raised to be *' Consul Ebroi- thcse details come from Orderic. idward of Salisbury (on whom see 3. Nichols in the Salisbury volume Archzological Institute, p. 214) in 854 A. In 854 B we read how ig*s son Richard with a hundred fought on horseback ; ** Reliqui m Rege pedites in campo dimica- See abore, p. 116. Henry of ;don, on the other hand (218), the King fight on horseback and \ on foot. e passage in Orderic, 854 D, is onderfiil, and almost carries us to the Italian wan of the fifteenth century. He says that, out of nine hundred knights, three only were killed ; •* Ferro enim un- dique Testiti erant, et pro timore Dei noti- tiaque contubemii vicissim sibi parcebant ; nee tantum occidere fngientes quam com- prehendere satagebant; Christiani equi- dem bellatores non effiisionem fratemi sanguinis sitiebant, sed legali triumpho ad utilitatem unctsB ecdesisB et quietem fidelium, dante Deo, tripudiabant.** * Orderic tells the story in 855 A, where the King of the French is oddly described as '* quanti emolumenti vir.** » Ord. Vit. 855 B. The King's horse is *' mannus/' that of the Clito is ** pale- fridns." **Ouillelmus Adelingus** and "Guillelmus Clito" are here brought close together. * lb. 854 A, B. *' Ibi Guillelmus Clito armatus est, ut patrem suum de longo carcere liberaret et avitam fibi hereditatem vendicacet." 126 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. feeling of a real sense of right, when King Henry sent back, unhurt and unransomed, certain knights who were at once his own men and the men of the King of the French, and who had preferred to act ac- cording to their allegiance to the higher lord.* And another incident of this battle shows that we are getting into a new age. The fashion of coat-armour, or of something to the same effect, a fashion unknown in the days of the Conqueror,^ had now come into use, and some French knights, throwing aside the devices by which they would have been known, were able to mingle themselves with the loyal Normans, and, by help of the common tongue, to join undiscovered in the songs of triumph which were raised over their defeat* Lewis, thus defeated in battle, tried before long to gain a moral advantage over his enemy. Pope Calixtus had called a Council at Rheims (Oct. 20, 1 1 19), which was attended by a crowd of prelates and others from Germany, Gaul, and England. King Henry let the pre- lates of England and Normandy go to it, but only with conunaoids, couched almost in the words of his father. They might profess his duty to the apostolic see ; they might promise punctual fulfilment of all accustomed duties and payments ; but he would not give up a jot of the privileges handed down to him from old times, and he would put up with no innovations in his kingdom.* He had need to give such orders ; for in the course of the Council, an attempt was made to make the Pope sit as judge, or at least as arbiter, between the con- tending Kings of France and England. King Lewis made his ccnn- plaint in person ; he set forth how Henry had seized on his fief of Normandy, how he had imprisoned his vassal, its lawful Duke, and disinherited his son; how he had seized his ambassador Robert of Belesme, how he had abetted his rebellious vassal Count Theobald, and had done other things contrary to the duty of a man to his lord.^ The feeling of the assembly was with the French King, and the Arch- * Ord. Vit. 835 B. With this we may compare a story of the generosity shown by a baron on the other side. Richer of L'Aigle, who, though engaged in rebellion, could act worthy of his name (see vol. iv. p. 447). Orderic, 857 B, tells us how Richer, when driving back a raid of peasants on the King's side on his own land, spared a crowd of them who asked for mercy under a way-side cross. The comment is, •* Nobilis vir pro Creatoris metu fere cen- tum villanis pepercit, a quibus, si prehen- dere eos temere prxsumpsisset, grande pretium exigere potuisset." ^ See vol. ii. pp. 187, 188. » Ord. Vit. 855 C. "Nonnulli fugien- tum cognitiones suas, ne agnoscerentur, projeceruiit, et inscctantibus callide mixti signnm triumphantium vociferati atque magnanimitem Henrici regis \ que fictis laudibus prsecopati sunt.** * The Council at Rheims is recorded by the Chronicler, 1119, and Eadmer, 124, who connect it chi^y with the affair of Thurstan of York. The fullest accomit is in Orderic. 857-863. Henry *s iiittnic> tions (858 A) are wound up with the words, **superfluas adinventiones regno meo inferre nolite.'* Henry of Hunting- don (218) cuts it short. There is another account in Suger, c. 21. • The speech of Lewis is given by Orderic, 858-859. It is added that he was ** ore facundus, statura procerus, palli* dus et corpulentus.** COUNCIL OF RHEIMS, 127 ouen, Geoffrey, who tried to speak on behalf of his sovereign, even find a hearing.* But Pope Calixtus was too wary ommit himself to any condemnation of the King of the 3e was moreover Henry's kinsman, a nephew of Guy, the ^ho was overthrown at Val-^s-dunes.* He would go and rson to his kinsmen, to King Henry and Count Theobald. • decrees were passed in the Council ; the Truce of God confirmed,' and, if Henry of England was spared, an vas hurled at his Imperial namesake and son-in-law, to- his anti-pope.* The interview between the Pope and the ntly (11 19) took place at Gisors; and we are told that able fully to convince the Pontiff of the righteousness of . All that he had done had been to deliver Normandy ly ; he had taken it away, not from his brother, who was a >nly in name, but from the thieves and murderers and robbers of churches who had it in actual possession.* as certainly a good one ; and the Pope employed himself about a peace between the two Kings ( 1 1 20), accompanied .tion of the castles and prisoners which had been taken on ity was again followed by a short season of p)eace, and it that season of peace that Henry, victorious over his d to endure the heaviest of blows in his own house. We cached that event in Henry's reign which has naturally *per impression on popular imagination than any other, vas in truth the turning-point in his reign, and indeed in nglish history. The Conqueror had founded a dynasty :o last from his day to ours ; but it was to be continued in 5 who sprang from him only by the same spindle-side by sprang from the older royalty of -Alfred and Cerdic, His 859 B. "Orto tumultu ntercepttts conticuit, quia leraot inimicoruni, quibus ictorioso principe displicuit." son of William Count of of Count Reginald and of iter of Richard the Good. of Guy, Archbishop of ards Pope Calixtus, is given ^ A. See vol. L p. 310; 8, 159. Orderic uses the Bnrgundionum," but the nt is the Imperial Palatinate ench Duchy. 36oB. K^ "Karolum Henricum Imperatorem theomachum, et Burdinum pseudo-papam, et fautores eonim, rocerens excommunicavit.'* There are a crowd of other decrees on various subjects, among them a further forbidding of clerical mar- riages and of the investiture of abbots by any la)rman. * This interview is recorded by William of Malmesbury, v. 406; more fully by Orderic* 864-866. Henry, is made to say (865 B) that in Robert*s days "penc paganismus per Normanniam passim diffon* debatur.*' Henry of Huntingdon (a 18) remarks that "collocuti sunt sacerdos magnus et Rex magnus.** * ChroD. Petrib. iiao. 128 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. only direct and legitimate male descendants were now King Heniy, the captive Robert, ajiU their sons the two rival Williams. With thcra, in the second ^feneration, the male line of the great William was to end in sons each of whom was cut off in the lifetime of his father. The turn of the jEtheling came first* Every pains had been taken by his father to secure his succession on both sides of the sea* The nobles of Normantiy had already done homage to him as their futttit Duke,* and the year after, the \Vitan of England did the like in a great meeting at Salisbury (March 19, 1116),* Still further to strengthen his claim to the Norman succession, William had, seem- ingly as one of the articles of the treaty, done homage to the King of the French for the fief which he was one day to hold of him.' Tbe fact is remark a bio J as there is no record of any homage done by either William Rufus or Henry, both of whom seem to have looked on Normand)- as a land to be fought for or bargained for without any thought of tbe rights of the over-lord. But it is no less plain that the King of the French never forgot that the Duke of the Nor- mans was his vassal, and the French version of these events implies that impatience of the feudal relation was one motive for Henry's hostility towards his over -lord.* In such a state of things, and especially after the cessions which Lewis had made to Henry at the time of the former treaty, this homage done to the King of the French by Henry's son is one of the most speaking signs of Henry's anxiety to secure his son's succession by every means in his power. With the same view, the marriage which had been agreed on some years before between young William and Matilda of Anjou was now cele- brated, though her father Fulk, afterwards King of Jerusalem, was at this time absent in his future kingdom.' All this points on the one hand to the growing notion of hereditary right, and on the other hand * See above, p. 1 24. ' Eadmer, 117. ** Quid sibi eventurum foret ignorans, WilHelmum, quern ex in- genua conjuge sua Blium susceperat, hae* redem regni substituere sibi volebat. Igi- tur agnita Regis voluntate mox ad metum ejus omnes principes facti sunt homines ipsius Willielmi, fide et sacramento con- fitmati." The Bishops only promised to do homage to the ^theling in case of their outliving the King. The homage is also recorded by Floreuce (1116) in one of his last entries. » Will. Malms, v. 405 ; Gesta Con- sulum, iii. 264. This last writer has his own version of the wars between Henry and Fulk. See also the Continuator of Florence, II 19, and Simeon, 11 20. * Suger, 21. *' Quoniam omnts po- testas impatiens consortis erit, rex Frao- corum Ludovicus, e& qua supereminehat regi Anglorum ducique Normannonun Henrico sublimitate in eum semper, tan- quam in feodatum suum, efferebatur. Rex vero Anglorum, et regni nobilitate ct divitiarum opulentiA mirabili inferioritatis impatiens, suffragio nepotis Theobaldi palatini comitis et multorum regni omo* lorum ut ejus dominio derogaret, regnam commovere regem turbare nitcbatur. ^ The marriage is placed by Orderic (851 B) in 1119, before the CoanciL William of Malmesbury (v. 405) and the Gesta Consulum (264) connect it with the peace. The Angevin writer speaks of William as "qui post eum [Heniicum] regnaturus erat." DEATH OF THE MTHEUNG, 129 to the fact that it was still only a growing notion. It was still needful to take every means to secure the succession of the son of the reigning King, especially when he was threatened by a competitor who, in Normandy at least, numbered many partisans. But it is worth notice that we hear nothing of any thought of a coronation during his father's lifetime, a course so common both in France and in the Empire, and which was followed in England by Henry's grandson without any such pressing need. Perhaps Henry felt sure of England and doubted only of Normandy. Perhaps English ideas of the kingly office did not allow that there should be two crowned Kings in the land at the same time. Perhaps Henry, anxious as he was that his son should reign when he was dead, was no more willing than his father was to do any act which could be construed as giving up one jot of his power in his lifetime, even in favour of that darling son. But Henry's schemes were not destined to bear fruit. No homage, no marriage, no treaty or agreement of any kind, could in those days rule the succession to the English throne, before that throne was vacant. In this case the plans which had been so wisely laid were shattered, as the men of those times deemed, by the immediate act of God. When the peace was concluded, and the affairs of Normandy had been setded, the King and the ^theling hastened to come back to England. The King's voyage was prosperous; the -^theling perished, as all the world knows, by the sinking of the White Ship (1120).* Men marked that the ship which thus refused to carry another William from the shores of Normandy to those of England had for its captain the son of the man who had steered the ship which bore his grandfather from Saint Valery to Pevensey.* With his heir Henry lost his natural son Richard, who had specially distinguished himself in the French wars,' a natural daughter, Matilda the wife of Rotron Count of Perche, the young Richard Earl of Chester, in whom ended the male line of his father the mighty Hugh,* and a crowd of others high in rank and office.* Grave men spoke of many of them ^ The drowning of William and his companions is recorded by all oar writers, beginning with the Chronicler, 1 120. FnlJer details and comments are given by Orderic, 867-870; William of Malmes- Imry, r. 419 ; Henry of Huntingdon, 218 A, and in Anglia Sacra, ii. 696 ; Eadmer, 135, and the Continuator of Florence, iiao. Orderic seems to put it under a wrong year. » So says Orderic, 867-868. Thomas Fits-Stephen is made to say that the Conqueror passed oyer to England in the ship of his father Stephen, a tale which it is not easy to reconcile with the story of the Mora (see vol. iii. p. 354). St^hen may however have been the captain or pilot. * This Richard, who appears in all the battles, is especially spoken of by Henry of Huntingdon in the De Contemptu Mundi, Ang. Sac. ii. 696. * This Richard is also the subject of the moral comments of Henry of Huntingdon (u. s.). See also Orderic, 5"B. » Ordcric^s list (870 B) begins with "Theodericus puer Henrici, nepos Im- peratoris Alemanorum," and ends with ** Robertus Malconduclus, et nequam Gisuliiis, umba regis," whatever &emba may be. 130 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. as deeply stained with the vices of the last reign, and looked on the blow which swept them away as a special judgement from heavtn.^ The grief was general. Whatever may have been the personal chaiatUi of the young i^theling at the age of seventeen, he had as yet had no greai opportunities for working any public wrong,' All Henry's schemes Id settle the succession had come (o nothing. The succession of William the Clito was a prospect to which he could not bring himself to look for- ward, and we may conceive that, however acceptable it may have been in Normandy, it would have been unpopular in England. The KingV first remedy for ilie danger was the obvious one of a second marriage: In the year after his son's death, Henry again took him a wife, a wft who, if not English, was at least not French, and who was sought for among the Princes who were the vassals of his son-in-law^ The new Queen was Adelaide or Adeliaa,' the daughter of Godfrey, Count of Lbwen and Duke of Lower Lothringen/ But this second marriage was childless, and this failure of legitimate raale issue presently led Heniy 10 a step which was without parallel either in England or in Normandy* As before, iho peace did not last long. The beginning of fresh dfe- turbances (1121-1123) seems to have been when Count Fulk canM back from Jerusalem and demanded the dower of his daughter, the widow of the -/Etheiing, who was kept in all honour by her father-in- law in England.*^ He soon made an alliance with the rebellious nobks "Atliz." ^ The marriage is recorded by the Chronicler, 1121 ; "Se cjng Henri . . . toforan Candelmaessan on Wiodleioru him to wife forgyfen AlSeiis and sytfSia to cwene gehalsod. Seo wst Jmbi bo*- togan dohtor of Luuaine;'* where mark the unusual word ** heretoga " (see vol L p. 393). This is transUted by Heoij of Huntingdon, who adds "causa pgloi' tudinis." Orderic, 871 A, sajrt that it was "coiisultu sapientum" (**mid mSnra witena gejwahte"), which comes oat moit fully in £admer» 136, who remaiks thit the King took this step ** ne quid nheritf iiihoaestum committeret.*' Thit pfartR may bear more than one meaning, and ii may perhaps be contrasted with tbc vordi of William of Maknesbury, r. 41a. See also Flor. Cont. iiai; Bmt, 1118; and Wace, 15375. Mr. Earle (Parallel Chromdes, 363) collects other forms of ber name. She calls herself "Aalidis** and '^Aelidia." * Chron. Petrib. iiai; WiU. Mabns. T. 419; Sim. Dun. II33; Ord. Vit. 875 D. See more of bcr in Waoc^ >53^ ^ sleqq. * This comes out most clearly in Henry of Huntingdon (218 A), whose words are as strong as words can be. Cf. Oervase, 1339. But the charge is in- directly confirmed by Orderic, who men- tions (868 B) that several persons, among them Stephen the future King and Ead- ward of Salisbury, left the ship, ''quia nimiam multitudinem lascivsB et pompaticse juventutis inesse conspicati sunt." Mat- thew Paris (Hist. Ang. i. 230) seems to speak of the charge as a French calumny ; **Si Francigenarum adversantium probris credendum est." There is also a singular statement in the Brut y Ty wysogion, 1 1 1 7, which I must quote in the translation without pledging myself to its accuracy, how there were with them "about two hundred principal women, who were deemed roost worthy of the affection of the King's children. Cf. Sim. Dun. in anno. * See Appendix W. On the grief of Henry, which has passed into a popular legend, Wace has much to say, 15325- >5375. ' Like her step-daughter, she appears in the Chronicle of Melrose (iiai) as fyAX WITH FRANCE. '31 of Nonnandy, by whom the claims of William the Clito were again asserted.^ Among these we hear especially of Waleran the son of Hemy's late counsellor Robert of Meulan, a youth who with his broiher had been brought up under the eye of the learned King, and whose youthful powers of disputation had been displayed before Pope Calixtus himself.* Again King Lewis stepped in as the ally of the Norman rebels, but this time the English King was able to stir up a mighty adversary against him. Henry's Imperial son-in-law came to fais help (1124) against the common enemy of Germany and England. Again as in the old days of the Ottos,' a German host was gathered for the invasion of the Western kingdom. But the march of Caesar acted only as a diversion on behalf of his English ally. The special object of the expedition was to attack Rheims, where Pope Calixtus had a few years before pronounced his anathema. But great was the rejoicing in France when, on the news of civil disturbances within the German realm, the Imperial host turned back from Metz, and when, in the next year (11 25), all danger from that quarter passed away by the sadden death of the last Emperor of the Prankish house.* His mar-. riage with the English Augusta was childless, and new pages in the history both of Germany and of England were thus opened. But meanwhile the war had been brought to an end in Normandy. In a battle in Bourgtheroulde (i 124), in the land between the Seine and the Rille, the rebels were utterly overthrown, chiefly by the prowess of the archers in the royal host. That host is again called English, and it may be that the forefathers of the men whose arrows were to win the fight of Crecy had already learned to wield the weapon of their con- querors.* Most of the rebel nobles were taken prisoners, and this time • The war and its causes are well wnrard tip bj our own Chronicler when .he comes to the end of it in 1124. Cf. Orderic. 875 C, ' The rebellion of Waleran is marked by Orderic (875 C) and in the Chronicle (lia3\ where we find a remarkable use of English language as applied to Normans, '^and weaz \\ micel unfriO betwux him [Henry] and hisc \ngiuu** Of the early edocatioa of Waleran, besides the passage io Orderic. see Will. Malms, v. 406. ' See Historical Essays, First Series, pp. * This expedition is recorded by Otto of Pieising (vii. 16), and more fully by Ekkehard (Pertz, vi. 261), who is followed by Coorad of Ursperg. He says that the Barch was made "specie quidem contra Sazoniam, re autem vera contra Galliami, in regnum regis Lodewici pnebitomt, nimi- mm auzilinm socero suo Heinrico Angliae regi pro possessione Normanniac provincial contra eundeni regem Galliae Ludewicum contendenti." He adds the remark that " Teutonic! non facile gentes impugnant ezteras." Suger (21) of course tells the story with great glee, and adds, "Quo facto nostrorum modernitate yel multorum temporum antiquitate nihil darius Francia fecit, aut potentias suae gloriam viribus membrorum suorum adjuvans gloriosius propalavit, quam quum uno eodemque termino de Imperatore Romano et Rege Anglico, licet absens triumphaTit." He had before made Lewis speak of the Germans as men who " in terrarum domi- oam Franciam superbe prxsumpserunt.'* Orderic (882, 883) records the death of Henry, and describes the election of his successor Lothar at great length. ' The battle is recorded by the Chroni- K 2 '32 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. we hear little of generosity or mercy. King Henry lield bis court at Rouen to sit in judgement on his rebels. Two who bad broken their allegiance were sentenced to the loss of their eyes, and die same punish- ment was decreed against Luke of Barre, who had never sworn fealty to Heiuy, but who had stirred up his bitterest wrath by making satirical verses against him.* The holy Count Charles of Flandefs» whom some chance had brought to Rouen, pleaded in vain for mercy, and it is even implied that the King's arguments convinced him of the justice of the sentence.^ The poet, on hearing his doom, dashed oot his brains against the walls of his prison.' Those who fared the best, Count Waleran and Hugh of Montfort, passed years in the dungeons of Rouen and Gloucester. Peace again followed (1125). The Clito was once more disowned everywhere. Fulk of Anjou had promised him his younger daughter Sybil, and he had given him in fief the county of Maine, again vacant by the death of William the JEtheling. But the subtlety of Heniys canonists found out that the marriage was unlawful on the ground of kindred, and young William was again cast adrift.* His time of utter distress and wandering did not however last very long. But, before any change took place in his fortunes, Henry had made another attempt to settle the succession of his kingdom and duchy in a way unparalleled in both. His former plans had come to nothing. **Filius huic, fato Divom, prolesque virilis Nulla fuit, primaque oriens erepta juventa est. Sola domum et tantas servabat filia sedes.**^ His son was gone ; bis mind seems to have been made up to have anv successor rather than his nephew. The growing respect for legitimate birth— a respect springing from the growing conception of kingship as a property rather than an ofiice — seems to have shut out all idea rf cler, 1 1 24, at some length, and more fully by Orderic, 879-881. It is he who men- tions that the battle was chiefly won by forty archers. He does not distinctly mention their nation, but he makes the rebels oppose the "flos totius Galliae et Normanniae " to the •* Angli *' against whom they had to fight. * The places of imprisonment of Hugh and Waleran are carefully marked in the Chronicle. It is from Orderic (880 D) that we get the story of Luke. The King first blinds two prisoners, "pro perjurii reatu/* then " Lucam quoque de Barra pro derisioriis cantionibus et temerariis nisibus orbari luminibus imperavit," or, as the King himself is made to say, ** indecentes de me cantilenas facttos coraula com- posuit ad injuriam mei paUun cantarit, malevolosque mihi hostes ad cachiimos ita saepe provocavit." See vol. u. p. i8q. ^ Ord. Vit. 881 B. " His anditii Flan- drisB Dux conticuit, quia quid cootia hac rationabiliter objiceret non habait.** ' This story is also told bj Orderic (u. s.). He died ** multis moereattbos qvi probitates ejus et facetias noverant." * This marriage is referred to in the Chronicle, 1 1 27. See also Will. Malms, v. 419, and Hist. Noy. i. i ; Ord. Vit. 838 B. The kindred was of the most distaut kind, and it would tell equally against the Angevin alliances which Henry made for his own children. • Virgil, ^ncid, vii. 50. HENRY'S PLANS FOR HIS DAUGHTER'S SUCCESSION, 133 passing on the Crown which had been held by William the Bastard to any of his grandsons who were not bom in lawful wedlock. Richard, whose youth had given such hopes, and who had so distinguished him- self in the French wars, had died in the White Ship ; but. if England had been called on to choose from among the descendants, legitimate and illegitimate, of her Conqueror, she could hardly have made a worthier choice than Robert of Caen. Enriched by a marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon, and invested with the earldom of Glou- cester, Henry's son Robert was one of the first men in the kingdom ; but, at this time at least, no word was breathed of his succession to the Crown.* Henry had now given up all hopes of children by his second marriage ; ' so he now ventured on a step which showed,^ beyond all others, how far the new notions of kingship had already grown^ Alike in Normandy and in England, the rule of a woman was something un- heard of. According to all Teutonic notions, it would have been held absurd to bestow the kingly or ducal office on one who could discharge none of its chief duties. Normandy had never seen a duchess regnant ; in England the only case is the doubtful, and in any case anomalous and momentary, reign of Sexburh in Wessex.' The Lady of the Mercians, though she practically discharged the duties of a sove- reign, was not a crowned Queen.* But now 8ie feudal conception of kingship had gained such ground that it began to be thought that a kingdom, like any other estate, might, in the absence of a son, pass to a daughter. She might either discharge her kingly duties in person, or she might hand over both the estate and the office to her husband. In either case, the idea of a Queen regnant points to a notion of king- ship which was new on both sides of the sea. When therefore, after five years of marriage, Adeliza had brought him no heir, Henry deter- mined to attempt to obtain the ackowledgement of his diaughter as his successor. The death of the Emperor had left Matilda a childless widow ; • there was therefore no fear of either an Imperial husband or an Imperial son putting forth claims which might have been dangerous to the island reahn. In England and Normandy, on the other hand, the belief seems to have been that the notion of placing Matilda in a post so unusual in her sex did not come first from her father or his counsellors, but from some of the princes of the land which now, at her father's bidding, she was called on unwillingly to leave.* Her presence however was needed by his policy. He sent for her from Germany ; > See Appendix BB. Cf. Roger of Howden, 1. 181, who adds * Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. a. that Matilda came to England with the ' See vol. i. p. 392. Imperial crown and the hand of Saint * See Tol. i. p. 38 a. James. To receive the relic the abbey * Matthew Paris (Hist. Ang. i. 337) of Reading was founded, ** coronam antem has a wonderful story about the Emperor Imperialem in thesauro suo recondidit." forsaking his crown (see vol. iii. p. 51a), and * Both William of Malmesbury and the how Matilda was suspected of bis death. Continnator of William of Jnmi^es imply 134 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, she joined him in Normandy, and accompanied him when he came back in triumph to England with the captives of Bouigtberoulde.* He now took the decisive step. In the Christmas Gem6t of the year, which w^s opened at Windsor and then adjomned to Westmin- ster (i 126-1*127),' all the chief men of the land, spiritual and temporal, swore that, if the King died without heirs male, they would receive his daughter as Lady — the words Queen and Duchess seem to be avoided— over England and Normandy.' Three among those who swore are spe- cially to be noticed, on account of the part w&ch they played in die 1^ history. The first place among the laity was yielded without dispute to David, King of Scots. His kingly rank placed him above all other vassals of die English Crown, and as the uncle of the future Lady, he was, next after her father, the natural guardian of her rights. The se- cond place was warmly disputed between the King's legitimate nephew and his illegitimate son. The one was Stephen, Coimt of Boulogne and that the princes of some part of the Em- pire, though the more strictly German lands seems to be carefully shut out, sought for Matilda to reign over them, after the example, we may suppose, of Pulcheria — Zoe and the second Theodora would be no precedents in the West. The words of the former writer (Hist. Nov. i. i) are, ** Constat aliquos Lotharingonun et Longobardonim principes succedentibus annis plus quam semel Angliam venisse, ut earn sibi dominam requirerent.** The Continuator (viii. 25) says, "Licet ex- cellentissimi prindpes curiz Romanae ez- perti prudentiam ipnus, et morum venus- tatem vivente imperatore conjuge suo earn omntmodis libi imperare optarent et hac de causft ipsam prosecuti sint usque ad curiam sui patris id ipsum rogaturi.*' It is not very dear who are meant by the ** prindpes curiae Romanae.** But it would seem that the expression was chosen with the same object as that of William of Malmesbury. But either expression is worth comparing with the words of Orderic, 88a C, ** Imperii insignia moriens Cesar imperatrid Matilda dimisit." * The two things, the return of Ma- tilda and the bringing over of the captives, are connected by the Chronicler (11 26), and the visit of David comes directly after. ' The statement of William of Malmes- bury that the Gem6t was held in London, and that of the Chronicler that it was at Windsor, are reconciled by the account of Simeon (11 28) that the adjourned to London (*' traosut iode'Liiii- doniam *'), where the oath was taken 00 the Feast of the Circumcision. So Heo. Hunt. 219. • Chron. Petrib. 1 1 2 7. "He let swereo ercebiscopes and biscopes and abbotet and eorles and ealle ba tSeines 9a )>aBr watroo, his dohter ^"Sdic Engleland and Nor- mandi to hande aefter his dan." See also Simeon, iis8; Flor. Wig. ira6; WiD. Gem. viii. 25, who makes the oath **qQa- tenus ipsi'pro suis viribos obnittrentnr nt eadem Augusta, post deceftum patris, monarchiam majoris Britanniae^ qoam nunc Angliam vocant, obtineret." In the Gesta Stephani (7, cf. 34) the form of the oath is given ; '* Ne quern post illius dis- cessum, nisi aut filiam, quam comiti Andegavensi maritArat, aut illius, si soper- fuisset, hacredem in regno susdperent** And the partisans of Stephen are made to add, ** Ad ipsam quoque haeredandam im- perioso illo cui nnllus obsistebat, oris tool* truo, summos totius regni jnrare compofit potius quam praccepit." William of New- burgh (i. 3) makes it an oath ; *' Pflis soa et susceptis vel suscipiendis ex ea nepoti- bus." William of Malmesbury, who gives the fullest account (Hist. Nov. i. a, 3), is the only one who gives any distinct title ; *' Ut si ipse sine tuerede masculo decederct, Matildam filiam suam, quondam impera- tricem, incunctanter et sine ulla retractione dominam susciperent.*' She u "Domina AngUx ** again in ii. 41. MATILDA'S SUCCESSION ACCEPTED, '35 Mortain, the brother of that Count Theobald whose cause had been made the excuse for so many wars. The other was Robert Earl of Gloucester. One pleaded the rights of nearness of kin to his father, the other those of legitimate birth and princely rank.^ The arguments of the nephew were deemed the stronger, and Robert held only the third place in taking the oath, which he afterwards so well kept, of faithfulness to his half-sister. This done, the Assembly departed, after the childless Queen had been comforted with a grant of the earldom of Shrewsbury,* as though it were fit that the principle which had just been established with regard to the Crown should be at once applied to lesser dignities also. According to one account, the Witan who had taken the oath to Matilda were absolved from it as soon as it was taken, by the King's failure to keep an oath of his own. The famous Bishop Roger of Salisbury declared that he and the rest of the assembly swore to the succession of MatUda only on condition that the future Lady of Eng- land should not be given in marriage to any one beyond the realm, unless with the consent of himself and the rest of the Great Council.' Be this true or false, the fact that Roger should have said so is of itself most remarkable. Roger was so far from being a genuine Englishman that he was not even a native of England. Yet he, truly or falsely, pats into his own mouth words which remind us of the words which are put into the mouth of Harold when he tells the ambassadors of Williiam that he cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of his Witan.* At any rate, before the year was out, Henry had given his widowed daughter to a husband out of the realm. According to the same statement of Bishop Roger, it was without any general con- sent of the kingdom, by the advice only of his son Robert and of two other counsellors, that Matilda was married to Geoffrey, the son of * WilHtm of Malmcsbury alone men- tions the dispute between Stephen and Robert. He speaks of it twice in the Historia Norella (i. 3 and iii. 55), but he oootradicts himself in the two passages. Kiii£ Darid swears first in both, but in one Stephen is described as swearing second, and in the other Robert. In the earlier passage we read, **Notabile, ut dum didtor, fiiit certamen inter Robertum et Stephaoom aemula laude rirtatem inter se contcnderent quis eomm prior juraret, illo privilegiam filii, isto dignitatem ne> potis spectante." In the second the language is a little changed; ''Roberto ezceUentiam filii, Stephano dignitatem nepotis, defendentibns." I accept the former statement as more careful and trustworthy, coming as it does in the regular historical nanative, while the other comes only incidentally in a panegyric on Robert. The writer of the Gesta Stephani (34) also mentions David as swearing first. Among the clergy Archbishop Wil- liam of course swore first, and " Rogerus magnus Salesburiensis episcopus" second. Hen. Hunt, aai 6. Cf. Will. Neub. i. 4. « WiU. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. a. ' lb. 3. ** Ego Roger! umSalisbiriensem episcopum saepe dicentem audivi solutum se Sacramento quod imperatrici fecerat, eo enim pacto se jur&sse, ne rex prseter con- silium suum et caeterorum procerura filiam cuiquam nuptam daret e^tra regnum." The historian however distinctly refuses to guarantee the truth of the Bishop's state- ment. * See vol. iii. p. 176. 136 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Fulk of Anjou.^ For one who held the rank of Augusta such a mar- riage seemed deprrading in the eyes of many, and not least in the eyes of the Augusta herself.' But the scheme exactly fell in with the plans of Henry. Anjou was, after all, a more dangerous enemy than France^ and the question about Maine was ever starting up in new forms. By this marriage he trusted that his most dangerous neighbour would be turned into a fnend, and that, in another generation, Maine, and Anjoa itself, would become part of the possessions of the ducal house of Nor- mandy. Such a dominion, even if Normandy and England were to be parted, would make its holder the most powerful prince of Northern Gaul, a prince far more powerful than his nominal lord at Paris. Besides these more distant hopes, there was the immediate gain of separating the house of Anjou from the cause of the Clito William— now suddenly become a great prince — now that the affinity which had been once contracted with him was transferred to the house of his uncle.' The more distant schemes of Henry took effect, at least for a season. Through the marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda, England and Normandy, Anjou and Maine, were all joined under the sceptre of their son. But in taking the steps which led to the establishment of that vast dominion, he was also paving the way for the separation of England and Normandy, for — ^what no man then could have dreamed of — the annexation of Normandy by France. The direct results of the mar- riage were a store of public anxiety and private unhappmess, followed by nineteen years of wretchedness for England. The widow of Caesar found the young son of the Count of Anjou a mate not to her mind. She was once sent back with scorn to her father, and the Witan of England had to meet in solemn debate to settle this domestic quarrel. Matilda (1131) went back to her husband, after her succession had again been solemnly confirmed by renewed oaths.* Yet the last years of * The marriage is recorded by all our writers; by the Chronicler, 1127; Sim. Dun. 1128-1129; Ord. Vit. 763 B. 889 A, where a wrong date is given ; Will. Malms, i. I, 3, who quotes Bishop Roger as saying, "ejus matrimonii nullum auc- torem, nullum fiiisse conscium, nisi Ro- bertum comitem Gloucestrse et Brianum filium comitis, et episcopum Luxovien- sem." And this is so far confirmed by the Chronicle that Robert and Brian (** Brian )>es eorles sunu Alein Fergan") are spoken of as taking Matilda over to Anjou. Geoflfrey*s personal surname of Plantagenet, which has come in popular use to be the name of the whole Angevin dynasty, is found in Wace, 1 5388 ; "Conte Giffrei son frere Ki Ten clamout Plante-genest." A few lines on he speaks of bim as " Plante-genest,*' without his name, as Rufus is spoken of. ' She had, according to WiUiam of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. i. i, left Gcrmaoy unwillingly, and the Chronicler (1127) says of the Angevin marriage, **lut of> )>uhte nal>ema ealle Frencisc and Englisc" So Will. Gem. viii. 25; "Licet invitam, dedit eamdem imperatricem in nxorem Gaufrido Martello." * This is clearly put forth by the Chronicler, 1 1 27; *'0c se kyng hit dide for to hauene sibbe of se eorl of Angeow, and for helpe to hauene togaenes his neve Willelm.- * This renewal of the oaths to Matilda is recorded by William of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. i. 6 ; *' Imperatriz . . « natali MARRIAGE OF GEOFFREY AND MATILDA, '37 Henry's reign were disturbed by the claims of his son-in-law to certain Norman castles, which led once more to skirmishes and sieges.^ But in the end some degree of harmony was brought about between hus- band and wife. Matilda became the mother of three sons, one of them to be in time another King Henry of even greater fame than his grandfather.' It is worthy of notice that the return of Matilda to England was ac- companied by a change in the prison and the warder of her captive uncle. He had been kept under the care of Bishop Roger of Salis- bury in his castle of the Devizes.' At the request of Matilda and of her mide the King of Scots, he was now moved to Bristol (1126), under what they must have thought to be the safer keeping of the Empress's half-brother, Earl Robert.* This clearly shows from what quarter danger was looked for ; and presently danger, if not from the captive Robert, at least from his son the Clito, again began to threaten. King Lewis again took up the cause of William (January, 1 1 27), and he con- soled him for the loss of Maine and of his Angevin bride by a grant of the French Vexin and of the hand of Adeliza the half-sister of his own Queen** The way to a greater promotion was, almost at the same moment, opened by the murder of Charles the Gk)od, Count of Flan- ders (March i, 1127), who died by the same death as his father Cnut, though not through the vengeance of an injured people, but through the plots of a competitor for his dominions, his kinsman William of Ypres.* There were a crowd of competitors for the vacant principality, among whom were King Henry and the Clito William, by virtue of their descent from Matilda the wife of the Conqueror, and Theodoric of Elsass, who came in the female line of Robert the Frisian. The King of the French, as over-lord of the fief, at once hastened into Flanders, and put William in possession of the county (i 127).'^ This solo adventtim suum exhibuit; habitoque noQ panro proceram conventu apud North- hamtonam priscam fidem apud eos qui dedcraot novavit, ab his qui oon dederant acoepit." One would not have found out from this why it was that Matilda came to England, and that she had been spend- ing two years in Normandy. But we make out the story from Simeon, 1 129, and Henry of Huntingdon, a 20. Matilda's own panegyrist in the continuation of William of Jumi^ges has nothing to say aboat this. * Ord. Vit 900 C. This is in the last year of Henry's rdgn. » Ord. Vit. 763 B; Will. Gem. yiii. as; Robert de Monte (Pertz, vi. 491), i'33- ' Orderic, 887 A, places him at the Devizes a little later, probably by a confusion of chronology. The castle of the Devizes certainly belonged to Bishop Roger. * This is recorded by the Chronicler, 1 1 26, who adds emphatically, " )?«t waes call don tSurh his dohtres raed and l^urh se Scotte kyng Dauid hire eam." > Ord. Vit. 884 C. She was daughter of Reiner, Marquess of Montferrat. Art de Verifier les Dates, iii. 10, 630 ; Wace, 15424. • Chron. Petrib. iia7; Ord. Vit. 884 D. The actual murderer was Burchard of Lille. ^ Orderic, 884, 885, describes this ex- pedition of Lewis and William ; ** Guilelmus 138 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. sudden elevation of his nephew calkd for the King^s presence in Nor- mandy.^ His attempts to win Flanders for himself through his nq)hew Stephen came to nothing ; ' but it appears incidentally that there were English or Norman adventurers in the camp of William who, were looked upon as traitors.' War followed between the new Marquess and his com- petitor Theodoric ; but William died in the next year (July 21, 11 28), and the news was brought in a dream to his father in his prison.^ Theo- doric Mras now (1128) confirmed in the possession of Flanders, with the good ^ill of the rival Kings. Henry even called on his nephew Stephen, whose county of Boulogne was a Flemish fief, and others of his subjects who held lands in Flanders, to acknowledge the new prince.* After this we hear no more of warfare between Heniy and Lewis. The death of William had so completely checked the schemes both of the French King and of his Norman allies that Henry could afford to set free his prisoners Waleran of Meulan and Hugh of Moitt- fort,' The few remaining years of Henry's reign were taken up with the domestic quarrels of his daughter and her husband. In the year before his own death Duke Robert died at Cardiff (February 3, 1134)/ and Henry remained the only male representative of the Conqueror. He most likely deemed that there could now be nothing to hinder the peaceable carrying out of his own scheme for the succession. But the time was not yet come for England actually to invest a woman with a kingly office. It was acknowledgement enough of the new ideas of sovereignty if the realm which the great William had won by the sword should pass on to those who came of his blood only by the spindle-side. Within our own island the reign of Henry the First was a time of most unusual peace on the northern frontier. Under three sons of Malcolm and Margaret, Eadgar (109 7-1 107), Alexander (1107-1114), and David ( 1 1 24- 1 1 53) ' — three names which well illustrate the strangely eclectic character of Scottish royal nomenclature — Scodand was now passing through one of the most important periods of her history. But it was a time of internal change, sometimes of internal war^kie, dacatum Flandrue dono regit et hereditario profession, and his death. So the Con- jure obtinuit." tinuator of Florence. Orderic, 887 A, ^ Chron. Petrib. iiaS. tells the story of Robert's dream. ■ This comes from Alberic, 11 27, who » Ord. Vit. 886 C. gires many particulars from various writers. ' The Chronicler, Ita^, tells this at ' Mag. Rot. Pipae, 93. ** Agnes de some length, and adds, *' worVon \m, ainva Belfago reddit compotum de xxxx. marcis gode freond swa hi wseron seror feond.** argenti quia filius suus porrexit ad comitem ^ Hist. Mon. Glouc. i. 15. Sec Ap- Flandrias." See Mr. Hunter's Preface, pendix Z. xix. ^ See the accounts of these three Kings, * The Chronicler, iiaS, and Orderic, and especially of David, in Williun of 885, 886, record his wound, his mooaitic Maimesbury, v. 400. FLANDERS, SCOTLAND, AND WALES. 139 not a time of enmity between the vassal and the Imperial kingdom. Influences from England, influences partly English, partly Norman, were spreading themselves over Scotland. Eadgar had been set on the throne by his English uncle ; ^ Alexander, according to some accounts, was married to a natural daughter of King Henry ,^ and we shall see that he played a part in English ecclesiastical affairs. Under David, above all, the connexion with England became closer, and the internal advance of the kingdom was greater than it had ever been before. But David, the brother of one Matilda, the uncle of two others, and the husband of a fourth, holding the earldoms of Northamp- ton and Huntingdon, through his marriage with the daughter of the martyred Waltheof,' acted, as long as Henry lived, not as an enemy of the English Crown, but as its highest and most honoured vassal. Andy while such a friendly state of things lasted, it may even be that on neither side was there much inclination to search over minutely into the question whether in each case it was the Earl of Huntingdon, the Earl of Lothian, or the King of Scots, by whom homage was paid and oaths sworn to the succession of the Crown. While there thus was peace on the side of Scotland, there was far from being peace on the side of Wales. It will be remembered that the reign of Henry is spoken of as the time when Wales was altogether subdued,^ and there can be no doubt that his setdement of the indus- trious and hardy Flemings in Pembrokeshire was a measure which did much to keep the kmd in subjection. There, in what once was spoken of as Litde England beyond Wales, this last Low-Dutch settlement in Britain, the last of the series of which the coming of Hengest was the first, still remains, forming a wholly separate people from their British neighbours, still speaking a form of the tongue once common to Angle, Saxon, and Fleming.^ The establishment of Norman Bishops in the two South- Welsh sees of Llandaff and Saint David's also marks another stage in the complete subjugation of the British land.* The two prelates thus appointed, Urban (1107) and Bernard (1115), are often spoken of in the ecclesiastical lustory of the time, and they were f<^owed in their churches by a succession of prelates who, whatever their nationality, were all of them under the allegiance of the English Crown. The attempt, made in the days of Rufus (1092), to set up a foreign Bishop, Hervey by name, in the far less fuUy subdued diocese of Bangor was less successful. "Agreeing ill with the Welshmen," as a later writer delicately puts it, he forsook his malecontent flock, and * See abore, p. 81. ■ See Appendix CC. * WUL Malms, y. 400. But she is not • Florence (1115) notes especially, in mentioned in the list of Henrj*s children recording the death of the last British in Will. Gem. viii. ag. Bishop of Saint David's, who however * See yoL iy. p. 4 10; Chron. Petrib, bore the English name of Wilfrith, •* Usque 1 1 34. ad ilhmi episcopi exstitere Brjrtonici." See * See aboye, p. 71. Ann. Camb. in anno. 14© THE NORMAtr KltfGS IN ENOJUNn, came back to England to be the first Bishop of \ht great see of Ely (1109-1131).' The native Welsh annals of this reigti are very full, but it isofJynow and then that our own writers take any notice of Webh affairs. It is plain that this Avas a time, in South Wales at leasts of speedy fusion between the Britons and the Norman setderSj though effusion of qmte another kind from that which was going on in England between Normans and Englishmen, There were constant intennaniages between the houses of the Norman lords and the Welsh princes, through which, alongside of more strictly national warfare, the chiefs of each race got entangled in the local and family quarrels of the other. It is characteristic of the time when we find all South Waks thrown into confusion for several years (1106- 11 16} by an outrage which reminds us of the legend of Troy, Among King Hcniy^s many natural children, one, Henry by name, was the son of a Welsh mother, Nest the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr.' Nest was afterwards the wife of Gerald of Windsor, one of the Norman settlers, who, after the fall of Amuir of Montgomery, commanded at Pembroke, and she was carried off thence by force by her kinsman Owen the son of Cadwgan.' Both Owen and his father were men of mark enough for their names to find their way into the works of English writers,* and the adventures of Owen, his reconciliations with the King and his rebellions against him, his wars with Britons, Normans and Flemings, and his death (11 16) at the hands of all of them together,* fill up a large space in the native annals. Such a tale as this is typical of the state of the country, a state combining the evils both of indei>endence and of subjection. But more real historical importance belongs to the planting of the Flemish colony and to the end of the native episcopate in South Wales. Of the endless feuds, 60th among the Welsh themselves and with the Norman and other invading settlers, a few facts only here and there concern us, chiefly those which English writers have thought worthy of recording. We have seen that Robert of Belesme was helped by Welsh allies whom the King won over to his side.' The ' 1 hare, borrowed Bishop Godwin's ' See Appendix BB. charming rersion of the words of William ' The story is told in both Bruts, 1106- of Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. 326; ** Her- 1 107; it is not mentioned in the LatinAonak. reus dimiserat spe majorum divitiarum * On Cadwgan, see above, pp. 73, 75. sedem, causatus quod sibi et Walen- • The career of Owen may be traced, sibus vicinis non convcniret." (William without going into the longer narratiYes seems to have confounded the Flintshire of the Bruts, in the Annaies Cambrix, with the Caernarvonshire Bangor.) The 1105, 1 1 10, I ill, II 12, II 13, 1 116. Continuator of Florence specially men- Under the last year oar own Florence tions that a later Bishop of Bangor, David, records his death, and gives him the kingly consecrated in 11 20, was "electus a title. prfncipe Griffino, clero et populo Wallix.'* * See above, p. 1 1 5. The entry about WELSH WARS. MI Welsh writers Wtterly complain of King Henry's treatment of Jorwerth the sonof Bleddjoi (i loi-i 1 12), who seems to have been the chief of this party, how he was defrauded of the lands which were promised him, and how he was kept in prison for several years. But from his English over-lord he at least met only with imprisonment ; in the year after his release he was killed by Ms own nephew.^ Nearly at the same time (mi), a further extension of the Norman or English dominion in Wales was made by the final conquest of Ceredigion by Gilbert Fitz-Richard, or Gilbert of Clare, the first settler in Wales of a house which played so great a part alike in England, Wales, and Ireland.' Twice in his reign (1114, 1121) Henry thought it needful to march against Wales in person. The first time it is recorded that he returned in peace after the usual precaution of building castles.' The second expedition immediately followed his second marriage. The men of Powys had risen, after the death of Earl Richard of Chester in the White Ship and the extinction of the house of their great enemy Earl Hugh. It seems to have been in this march that Henry was struck by an arrow and saved only by the strength of his breast-plate, but whether the shaft was sent by a British enemy or by a traitor in his own army was held doubtful.* From this expedition, in which he marched as far as Snowdon, Henry went back successful, having received the submission of the Welsh princes, and taking with him many hostages of the children of the chiefs.* From this march we may date that subjugation of Wales which is attributed to Henry. The Britons at least never again called for his personal presence, and the remainder of their annals down to Henry's death is taken up with records of their strifes amongst themselves, chiefly takmg the form of slaughter and mutilation inflicted by kinsman upon kinsman.' The general result of Henry's reign as regards Wales may be given in the words of a British writer, who is complaining of the unwise doings of a certain Cedivor son of Goronwy; "And none could be more thtf war in the later Brut, no I, is worth qooting, as showing that the Britons looked on Henry as an English King; •• Jorwerth, son of Bleddyn, son of Cynvyn, embraced the party of King Henry in opposition to the Frenchmen ("y troes Jorwerth ab Bleddyn ab Cynfyn yn mhlaid y brenin Harri, ac yn erbyn y Ffran- cod"). * See hit story in Ann. Camb. iioa, 1103, int. III3. ■ Ann. Camb. nil. "Owynus diver- tens ad Keredigeann irmptionis fecit in Flandreoses ; pro qao,Cadagaun pater ejus Keredigeano amisit, et Gileberto filio Ri- cardi tradttor." Sep Mr, Dimock's note to Giraldus, It. Kamb. i. iv., and Will. Gem. yiii. 37. * Chron. Petrib. 1 1 14. The Margam Annalist, 11 13, here draws a distinction of rank between two Welsh princes; **Rex Anglix Henricus collecto immenso exercitu e dirersis Britannix partibus, ad Walliam properavit, ut contra Grifiuum Gwinedotum regem et Owein Powisorum regulum pugnaret." * Will Malms. ▼. 401. » See Chron. Petrib. and Sim. Dun. 1 13 1, where the submission is strongly asserted. * See especially the later Brut, T122- iia6. 142 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. mischievous than that Cedivor to the country in general, befm he \A Dyved as he did, full of various nations, such as Flemings and French and Saxons, and his own native tribe ; who, though they were one nation with the men of Ceredigion, nevertheless had hostile hearts, on account of their disquietude and discord formerly ; and more diaun that, being in fear of offending King Henry, the man who had sub- dued all the sovereigns of the isle of Britain by his power and authority, and who had subjugated many countries beyond sea under his nik^ some by force and arms, others by innumerable gifls of gold and silver ; the man with whom no one could strive but God alone, fiom whom he obtained the power." * With Ireland the relations of Henry seem to have been peacefiiL The Irish Kings are described as looking up to the King of England with great reverence, though we get a vague hint that their friendship was not absolutely unbroken." It is more certain that, as under die two Williams, so under Henry, the ecclesiastical connexion went on, and at least one Irish Bishop, Gregory of Dublin, was consecrated in England.' We hear also of the friendship between Henry and Panl Earl of the Orkneys, though the homage of that prince was due, not to England, but to Norway, a friendship shown chiefly, it would seem, bj gifts to Henry's zoological collection at Woodstock.* Here again the connexion takes an ecclesiastical form, and the Bishop of Orkney, more strictly a suffragan of Trondhjem, is seen acting as a suffragan of York.* In short there can be no doubt that, through the witok isle of Britain and the neighbouring lands, the fame and power of Henry surpassed that of any King that had gone before him. It was more than the reign of Eadgar the Peaceful come again. The reign of Henry, as far as the internal affairs of England are con- cerned, is, except in ecclesiastical matters, little more than a blank. Of a reign in which, after its first three years, the land saw neither domestic revolt nor foreign invasion, there is no really connected narrative to tell. Setting aside ecclesiastical and foreign affairs, our Chroniclers have nothing to tell us beyond the frequent complaints of the King's exac- tions of money ,' a few notices of his strict justice, degenerating some- times perhaps into injustice,' and a crowd of notices of the weather, the ' Brut J Tywysogion, 1113. I follow Loch C^ record the death of Henry, b the tnnslfttion in the Chronicles and the latter he appears as "Hanrico mac Memorials. The account in Orderic (900 Willilim ri Franc ocus Saxan ocns Bretan." A) of a great general movement in Wales ' See Gervase, 1660, and more ioDj just before Henry's death, which he wished Cont. Flor. 11 31. See rol. iv. p. 359, to come back from Normandy to avenge, * Will Malms, t. 409. reads like a confusion with the dis- ' See Eadmer, 97. turbances which followed his death. * Chron. Petrib. 1 104, 1105, iitOi * See Will. Malms, t. 409. Both the II16, 1117, 1118. 1124^ IiaS. Chronicon Scotorum and the Annals of ^ Sec above, p. 105. PEACE UNDER HENRY. 143 crops, and natural phaenomena of all kinds.^ Of single events of this kind by far the most remarkable is the heavy pimishment of the false moneyers, i^hich I have already referred to as illustrating the character of the King.* Henry's castle-building on the Welsh frontier has been already spoken of, and we have seen that, peaceful as things were on the side of Scotland, he thought it needful to add strength to the city which his brother had called into being on the northern frontier. At the time when he was, as has already been noticed,' at York, where he, as a King who was ready to do justice in person, found much to do with the affairs of the city and of northern England generally, he visited Carlisle (ma), and gave orders for further de- fending the city with walls and towers.^ The new fortress had just become an immediate possession of the Crown, by the transfer of its Earl Ralph Meschines to the earldom of Chester, left void by the fate of the White Ship. In ecclesiastical affairs, on the other hand, the reign of Henry holds a most important place, especially as a link between the past reigns of his father and brodier and the coming reign of his grandson. It is a time of struggle between the Old-English notions which, as suiting their own interest, the Norman Kings were as zeak>us to defend as their English predecessors, and the new-fangled notions which, as an imav(Mdable result of the Conquest, were fast coming in from Rome. It was a time of dispute about the right of investitures and about the marriage of the clergy, two points on both of which the ancient customs of England had more or less fully to yield to Roman innova- tions. It was a time in which the connexion with Rome and the au- thority of Rome was strengthened in every way. This is a most speaking sign of the way in which the island Empire was being drawn into the general political system of Western Europe, and of the way in which the political system of Western Europe was fast coming to look to the Bishop of Rome as its centre. The change must have been unavoidable, when it pressed on with such strides as it did in the reign of a prince like Henry, than i^om none was less inclined to give up any of the rights of his crown and kingdom. Henry was surrounded, and for the most part supported, by Bishops of his own or his brother's chooang. They had mostly been promoted to ecclesias- ^ Chroo. Petrib. 1104, 1106, 1107, North^branas iDtrans regiones, ab Ebor- ilio, nil. Ilia, 1114, 1115, 1116, SCO divertit Tenas mare ocddentale, con- II17, 1118, 1119, nil, iiaa, 1124, nderatunit civhatem antiquam (piae lingua 1125, 1137, 1131. See Mf . Eark't note, Brittonum Cairlel didtiir, qtue nunc Carleol Parallel Chronicle^ p. 365. Anglice, Latioe yero Lngubalia appellatur, ' See above, p. 106. qnani data pecoaia cattello et tarribns * See abore, p. 107. prsecepit mnniri. Hinc rediens Eboracum, * Sim. Dun. iiaa. "Hoc anno rex pott graves civinm et comprovincialium Henricns, poit fcttom Saactl Michaelis implacitatiooes, reversos est Suth jrmbriam." 144 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. deal office from the temporal service of the King; they were able statesmen, often magnificent builders, who left behind them, some on the whole a good, some ot the whole a bad, memoiy in their dioceses; but none of them could lay any claim to the character of saints,' Randolf Flambard (1099-1 128), imprisoned at the beginning csf Henry's reign at the common demand of the whole naiion, contrived afterwards to make his peace with Henry, and lived on, engaged in rearing the nave of Saint Cuthberht's minster, till a late stage of Henry's reign ,^ A no i her prelate whom Henry had inherited from hit brother was Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln (1094-1123),^ of his own promoting was the more famous Roger of Salisbury (1107-1 139). Raised by Henry from the lowest rank of the priesthood, he appears as the chief adviser of the jEtheling in his lowlier days ; he appears no less, first as Chancellor, then as Justiciar, as the chief counsellor of the King. That post he holds at first in a kind of partnership with CouDt Robert of Meulan, and after Robert's death he keeps his influence unbroken, and seemingly shared by no other rival, till the end of Henry's reign.* Founder of the episcopal castles of Sherborne and the Devizes, he was the greatest builder of his day, both in military and in ecclesiastical works.* His architectural tastes were shared by hb nephew Alexander, who succeeded Robert Bloet* at Lincoln (1123- II 48), and by William of Warelwast (11 07-1 136), who figures as the agent both of Rufus and of Henry in the dispute with Anselm. He succeeded the Norman-born but English-minded Osbem ^ in the chair of Exeter, and his memory still lives in the twin minster towers of the capital of the West. All these prelates fill no small place in (he history of the time, and they all illustrate the law by which men brought from beyond sea were preferred to high ecclesiastical * The bad side of Henry's ecclesiastical reign, especially the secular! ty of the prelates, is set forth in the Oesta Stephani, 16. * The imprisonment and escape of Randolf Flambard are recorded* by the Chronicler and Florence, 1 100, lioi; Ord. Vit. 786, 787; WiU. Malms. Gesta Regum, V. 393 (see above, p. iii). 394; Hen. Hunt. 217, who says emphatically, ** quern Rex Henricus posuerat in vinculis, contilio gentis Anglorum." ' See his character in Will. Malms. Gest. Font 313; Hen. Hunt. De Con- temptu Mundi, 694. His remarkable death, which they both record, is told still more graphically by the Chronicler, 1123- * On Roger of Salisbury and his great- ness, see Will. Malms. Oest. Regg. t. 408 ; Ord. Vit. 904 D, Q19 C; Hen. Hont. 319; De Contemptu N(undi, 700 ; C^est. StqiL 46, 62 ; Will. Neub. i. 6 (who teUs the well-known story of the way in which he first recommended himself to Hemy); John of Hexham, 266; Stnbbs, Con- stitutional History, 349 et s«q. All these writers speak of Roger as set OTer the whole kingdom, and more than one of them uses the q)ecial phrase ** secundns a rege." * Of the place of Roger in the histofj of architecture I shall have to speak in a later Chapter. * Henry of Huntingdon gives as the panegyric of Alexander in prose in the De Contemptu Mundi, 700, and io his History he sings his praises in screnl hexameters. ^ See vol. i7. p. 354. SUCCESS/OAT OF BISHOPS, 1 45 offices, rather than the natives of the land, whether of English or Norman descent* Their prominence also makes us see that there was a good as well as a bad side even to the incroachments of Rome. The powers which had been exercised by the native Kings without damage to the purity of the Church were now abused, not only to the promo- tion of strangers, but to the general secularizing of the spiritual order.' From this point of view we can better understand how a man like Ansclm could appear, not only as the servant of Rome, but as the enemy of the ancient laws and liberties of England. In the early part of this reigli, alongside of the Conquest of Normandy, the chief place is again filled by the holy Primate, his disputes with the King, their reconciliation, and Anselm's attempted reforms. In this, as in many other matters, the early part of the reign of Henry the First reads at first sight like the reign of William Ruius over again. But it is only in the bare outline that the two stories are like one another ; and, if we must compare the ecclesiastical disputes of the reign of Henry the First with those of the reign of Rufus, we must compare them also with the ecclesiastical disputes of the reign of Henry the Second. A dispute between Rufus and Anselm and a dispute between Henry and Ansclm were two widely different things. And we may add that, if Anselm the natural saint was a less provoking adversary than Thomas the artificial saint, Anselm had to deal in Henry the First with a sovereign who better understood the rights of his own case than Thomas had to deal with in Henry the Second. Henry acts throughout with that calmness and caution which were leading features in his character. He never allows himself to be hurried into undignified reproaches, into groundless accusations, into acts of petty malignity such as are to be found in the conduct both of William Rufus and of Henry the Second. He marches also direcdy to his point. He lays down a principle, and he keeps to it. He never allows himself, for the sake of any momentary advantage, to fall into a position inconsistent with his general principle. And, when at last he yields part of his claims, he yields frankly and for ever. In his controversy with Anselm he cannot be charged with breach of faith, though, at more than one stage of his reign, he is open, like his brother, to the charge of keeping bishopricks vacant that he might enjoy their revenues. In short, Henry the First, whatever may have been his personal belief on such matters, was far too wary a statesman to show himself to the world either as a scoffer and blas- phemer like Rufus, or as one who, like Henry the Second, might be hurried by momentary passion, either into acts unworthy of his character or into admissions inconsistent with his position. In the case of Henry the First, that position is throughout a simple one, and * See above, p. 100, and Appendix W. * See vol. iv. p. J97. VOL. V. L 146 THE NORMAX KINGS IN ENGLAND. one with wl.ich no Englishman ought to qoarrel He would maintain the rights of the Crown of England as he received them. Like his father, he would do what the Kings before him had done ; what the Kings before him had not done he would not do. The English-born Henry, bom within Tostig s earldom, could speak as firmly, though \i\\k\ a milder voice, as Tostig had spoken to Pope Nicolas.* And yet if, as Englishmen, we go along with Henry in defending the rights of England, yet, as men, we cannot help yielding our sympathies to the holy man with whom he strove. In striWng with Henn', Anselm had not to wage that mere strife of good against evil which he had to wage in striving against Rufus. But the strife was with him none the less a simple work of duty. It was a work of duty in the strictest sense ; it is plain that his o^m personal opinion or interest had no share in the matter. Rome had spoken, and Anselm obeyed. And when he so obeyed, the blame rests less with him than with that policy of the Conqueror which had taught men that, when Roroe spoke, men should obey. The question between Henry and Ansehn was in no stnse a question of eternal right and >*Tong; it was a question between the law of England and the innovations of Rome. Henry's first act, as we have seen,* was to recall Anselm (iioo). He next called on him to do homage and to receive the restitution of the archiepiscopal estates at his hands.' Presently he called upon him to consecrate the Bishops whom he had invested according to that ancient form in which Anselm himself had been invested by Rufus. Anselm refused both demands. In the days of Rufus he had felt no scruple about doing homage to the King, about recei\'ing the staff from his hands, or about consecrating those who had received it in the same fashion.* Nor does he now show any sign that these ancient customs of England were in any way oflFensive to himself. But, during Anselm's joiuneys on the continent, those customs had been condemned in the Lateran Council in which he himself had been pre- sent.* And, with that condemnation in his ears, to have obeyed the law of the land would have been to obey man rather than God. It is * See vol. ii. p. 305. * See above, p. 112. ' Eadmer, 56. "Postulatns est pro consoetudinc antecessorum suorum regi hominium faccre et archiepiscopatiun de maou ejus reciperc." Sir Francis Palgrave (iv. 708) and Dean Church (Anselm, 254) seem to look on this demand as somf- thing unprecedented, something like the new commissions which the Bishops were made to take out on the accession of Edward the Sixth. But Eadmer does not seem to mark it as anything strange, and it surely means no more than that, as the estates of the see (archiepiscopatus) were actually in thi- King's hands. Ansehn vas to receive them from him. So bek>w (61) ; ** Excgit ab eo ut aut homo suus fieret, et eos quibus episcopatus vcl abbaiias se datunmi dicebat pro more antecessorum suorum consecraret. aut tcrram suam sim retractatiooe et festinanter cxiret." This harsher form of the demand is oddly sa-d to have been made by the advice of Duke Robert. * Sec above, p. 91 . * Sec above, p. 97. HENRY AND ANSELM. 147 the controversy on these points which forms the ecclesiastical side of our History for the first seven years of the reign of 'Henry. It is a marked contrast between the controversy as carried on by Rufus, and as carried on by Henry, that, in its first stage at least, it involved no personal breaclT between the King and the Primate. While the question was still pending, Henry restored the temporalities of the see/ Anselm heard the case of Eadgyth-Matilda, and officiated at her marriage and coronation.' And to his loyalty it was largely owing that Henry kept his crown in the struggle with Robert' And, during the same stage of the dispute, Anselm, by the King's licence, held a synod of the realm in the church of Westminster (1102).* In that synod, though stricdy an ecclesiastical synod, the great men of the realm generally were, at Anselm's special request, summoned to appear and to take their part in its decrees." So litde was Anselm, when he was left to himself, inclined to find any fault with the old doctrine of England which the Conqueror had set aside, that the English Church and the English nation were one body, and that the assemblies which dealt with temporal affairs should deal with ecclesiastical aflfturs also.* Anselm throughout strives, not for forms or for privileges, but for righteousness ; only in his view it was part of righteousness to yield implicit obedience to a power that he had learned to look on as higher than his ox^-n and that of his sovereign. In the decrees too of the Council we see the spirit of the man who filled its chief place. The canons of Anselm's synod, the canons to which he would have the laity as well as the clergy of the land give their consent, did not deal wholly with matters of ecclesiastical discipline or ceremony. A new step indeed was taken in the course of the long warfare against clerical marriages. The legislation of Lan franc on this matter had fallen very far short of what the zeal of Hildebrand had called for. Marriage was wholly forbidden to members of capitular and collegiate bodies; they were at once to part with their wives. For the rest it was simply decreed that they should not marry for the ' Eadmer, 56. ' See above, p. 1 1 9. * See above, p. 113. * The synod is recorded by the Chroni- cler, 1 101, who draws the tame sort of distinction as in 1085 (see vol. iv. pp. 164, 469); **Da )»9Brafter to ^t Michaeles msrssan wses se cjmg act Wsestmynstre and ealle )>a hxfod men on ^is lande, gehadode and bewede, and se arcebiscop Ansealm beold gehadodra manna sino0 and hi )«r manega beboda setton >e to Xpendome belimpa'S." The Council is abo recorded by Florence, who mentions that it was in this meeting that Roger of Salisbury and L the other Roger of Hereford were in- vested with their staves. See also Hen. Hunt, and Sim. Dun. 1 102. * Eadmer, 67. The council was held ** ipso [Henrico] annucntc,'* and it is added, *• Huic conventui aflFecerunt, An- selmo archiepiscopo petente a rege, pri- mates regni, quatenus quicquid ejusdem concilii auctontate decemeretur utriusque ordinis concordi cura et soUicitudinexatum servaretur." I suppose that the less carefully measured words of the Chroni- cler do not exclude this. * See vol i. p. 148. 148 THE AORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. future, and that no married men should be ordained.^ We may be sure that these orders had not been at all strictly carried out during the reign of the Red King. But now Anselm was, after so many years of laxity, holding his synod, and holding it after he had just come back from a share in those foreign Councils in which the marriage of a priest had been denounced as a crime no less heavy than his investiture by a layman. And it is further plain that the compromise made by Lanfranc could never satisfy those with whom the Hildebrandine doctrine was a matter of principle. It would amount, in the eyes of Anselm and of those who thought as he did, to a toleration of sin. One of tlie acts of this synod then was to enforce the new rule in all its fulness on the whole body of the English clergy. Marriage was utterly forbidden to all churchmen of the rank of sub-deacon and upwards.* The new legislation met with much resistance, and one of our informants, himself the son of a priest, tells us that the newly devised rigour only led to laxity of a worse kind than any which it was intended to stop.' But, at any rate, it was now that the rule of celibacy became for the first time the universal law of the English Church. Anselm's Council at West- minster thus marks an aera in our ecclesiastical history. A number of other decrees which were passed in this synod bad reference only to the duties and behaviour of the clergy, among which we find more than one forbidding spiritual persons to discharge temporal duties or to hold temporal offices.* This last canon was one which was vtry far from being put into execution in those days, but it would seem to be a natural inference from the separation of the two powers brought in by the Great William. But two of the decrees are of a distinctly moral kind. One was aimed at the prevailing vice of the late reign. It denounced against all sinners of that class, whether clerks or laymen, the loss of all rights and powers belonging to their several orders.** Another has a yet higher interest; it denounces *'die » Sec vol. iv. p. 288. * Eadmer, 67. The only shadow of relaxation seems to be in the case of sub- dcicons who were not canons. All dea* cons and priests must part from their wives, and th6 mass of the mairied priest was not to be heard. ' See Sim. Dun. and Hen. Hunt. 1102 ^317). Compare the complaints of the German clergy, vol. iv. p. 287. The prevalence of clerical marriages in England comes out very remarkably in Paschal's letter to Anselm in Eadmer, 91; **De prcsbyterorum filiis quid in Romana ec- clesia const itutum sit frateruitatem tuam nescirc non credimus. Ceterum quia in Angloruni regno tanta hujusmodi plenitudo est ut major pene et melior clericorum pars in hac specie censeatur, nos dis- pcnsationem hanc solicitudini tux com- mittimus." One of the canons of \ht present Council is, ** Ut lilii prcsbyterorum non sint hasredes ecclesiarum pairum suonini/* On the observance of the decrees of the Council in this and oiher respects compare the letters in Eadmer, 77, 81. ' Eadmer, 67. "Statutum est, ne episcopi szcularium placitorum offidum suscipiant . . . nc quilibet clerici sint sscn* larium prxpositi vel piocuratore^, aot judices sanguinis." • The punishment of the laity is, "Ut ANSELM'S FIRST SYNOD. M9 :handize by which men were still used to be sold in t brute beasts/'^ A succession of Kings and Bishops, liam and Wulfstan, had done their best to put down the j-trade. But the words of this canon would seem to ' the foreign slave-trade only, but to all selling of human ips to the existence of slavery altogether. In the same .1 Abbots were deposed Cor simony or other causes. The licler remarks that they were both French and English,* hem we find the distinctly English names of Ealdwine of dric of Peterborough,, and -fithelric of Middleton. When lishmen holding these great abbeys at a time when there England a single Bishop of English birth, we see the dis- :h was drawn in this matter between the highest and the of spiritual preferments. We see also that, in the days of old of an Englishman was as freely received as the gold nan. But it does strike us as strange, if we can believe of a local writer which represents Godric of Peterborough ), the successor of the terrible Turold, not only as an which his name is enough to prove, but as a brother of Jrand who, thirty-two years before, had brought the wrath leror on his house by seeking investiture at the hands of g Eadgar.' The decrees of the Council were passed; ation was to be pronounced every Sunday against those who them ; but the number of transgressors in all ranks was :o be so great that it was deemed expedient to dispense kly anathema. ing of this synod by Anselm, while the points at issue 1 and the King were still unsettled, marks the contrast conduct of Henry and the conduct of Rufus, who would nselm hold a synod at all. Meanwhile the controversy mbassies went to and fro between England and Rome, igliz, legali suz conditi jnis jr." . " Nc quis illud ncfarium actenas homines in Anglia bnita animalia vrnundari, us facere pracsumat." trib. II02. **And sc^cr :e and Englisce J^aer hcora forluron, |)e hi mid unrihte mid wogc J«ron lifedon." meon, and Henry of Hun- sce the local historians, wrough under 1098, and s, 64. Hugh speaks of brother of Brand (see vol. id tavs that he had been *• antca eiectus ad archiepiscopatum in Britannia niinori," which one would think must mean the see of Dol. Godric is said to have been chosen abbot agiinst his will, and the simony, if any. was less on his part than that of the monks, who gave the King three hundred marks to be allowed to choose freely. Stories of the same kind with regard to the abbey of Saint Augustine's and the bishoprick of London will be found in the Historia Pontificalis, Pertz, xx. 544, 545. Eald- wi::e of Ramsay was afterwards restored; see Eadmer, 92; Florence, 1 103; and Hen. Hunt. De Contemptu Mundi, 701. I do not know that anything special is recorded of -^thclric. 150 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. and disputes arose as to the real meaning of Pope Paschal's answers.* Meanwhile Henry was appointing ai)d investing Bishops, the famoos Roger of Salisbury among them, and calling in vain on Anselm to consecrate them.'* Archbishop Gerard of York was ready to con- secrate anybody ; but either scruples as to the form of investiture or loyalty to the Kentish metropolis began to work on the minds of the men whom Henry was anxious to promote. The Bishop-elect of Hereford, Reinhelm, gave back to the King the staff which he had received from his hand, and William Giffard, whose appointment to the see of Winchester had been the ver)' first act of Henry's reign, now suffered banishment and spoiling of his goods rather than receive a wrongful consecration at the hands of Gerard.' There is no sign of compromise on either side. Henry laid down the simple rule tkit he would stick to the rights of his predecessors ; he even went so far as to ask what the Pope had to do with the matter.* Anselm laiii down a rule no less simple, that he would rather lose his life than dis- obey the orders which he had himself heard laid down in the Council at Rome.^ Threats may have been used on the King's side ; but it is certain that, when Anselm left England (1103), it was not as a banished man, but as one who went with the King's full licence.* Nothing that could strictly be called personally hostile happened between King and Primate till, at a somewhat later stage of the dis- pute, the archiepiscopal estates were seized into the King's hands.' This step was taken when it was found that nothing had come of an embassy sent by the King to Rome.* Friendly letters however still • Chron. Petrib. 1 103. •* trserzfter fcrde se arcebisceop Ansealm f'f Cmtwarbyrig to Rome, swa swa him tnd ]>am cynge gcwcariS." Florence translates, bat at the same time enlarges and colours; ''An* selmus archiepiscopus, post multas injorias et diversas contumelias quas passus est rogatus a regc perrexit Romam v. Kal. Maii sicut ei ct rcgi convenit." Sec the story at length in Eadmer, 70. The Murgam Aimalist (1103) gives a strange account of Ansdm*s journey, and takes the opportunity to declaim against the laws of England. He goes on to say, with but little truth, that these fame questions were the cause of the former dispute between Anselm and William Rufns and of the later dispute between Thomas and Henry the Second. ^ Eadmcr, 76, where the King's just dealing with the archiepiscopal tcoaots is recorded. • For the mission of William of Ward- wast, sec Eadmer, 72-76. * The story is told at kng.h by E.idmer, 58-70, who is followed by William of Malmesbury, v. 413 et seqq., and more fully Gcst. Pont. 106 el seqq. ' Eadmer, d^^ 69. ' Chron. Petrib. and Florence, 1103, and more fully in Eadmer, 69. See also the remarks of Dean Church, Anselm, 365, 366. * Eadmer, 70. "Quid mihi dc mcis cum papa ? quic antecessores mei hoc in regno possiderunt, mca sunt.** William Rufus, according to Matthew Paris (Hist. Ang. i. 50), had taken a ground which was practically the same ; " Asseruit etiam rex W[illelmus] const anter, quod post conversionem ad fidem Christianam, tot et tantas in regno suo Angliae obtinuit liber- tates, quot iniperator in imperio. Quid papsB de vel imperii vel regni laicis liberta- tibus, cui pcrtinet tantum de animarum salute solJicitari ? " * Eadmer, 70. Anselm will not yield ** pro rcdemptione capitis sui.** SETTLEMENT OF THE DISPUTE. I6t passed between Henry and Anselm, and at last (i io6) Henry, now en- gaged in the conquest of Normandy, and Anselm, on his way back to England, met at Bee* The results of their conference came out in a legal form in the next yeaY". In another Council at Westminster the whole matter was settled by the King and the Pope each withdrawing part of his claims. Paschal agreed that the prelates should do homage to the King, and Henry, notwithstanding some counsellors who exhorted him to cleave to all the rights of his father and his brother, agreed to give up his claim to invest ecclesiastical persons with the ring and the staff (1107).' There was much to be said for such a compromise, and it was at least far more favourable to the papal claims than the humiliating concessions which four years later Paschal had to make to Henry's Imperial son-in-law.' The King gave up what might be construed into a claim to confer the actual spiritual ofl5ce, while the temporal allegiance of the prelates was secured by their becoming the men of the King. The vacant bishop- ricks were now filled with pastors ; never, it was said, were so many bishops consecrated at once since the old times of Eadward the Elder, when Archbishop Plegmimd consecrated seven bishops in a day.* Anselm survived the settlement for two years. He appears as Henry's counsellor in his measures for putting down the outrages of his followers and the false dealings of the moneyers.* And he ikd also to plead for the priests out of whom the King had wrung money after so strange a fashion.* Anselm had moreover to hold yet another synod, in order further to enforce the decrees of the former one against clerical marriages. He had too the satisfaction, for even to him it doubtless was a satisfaction, of receiving a full profession of obedi- ence from Archbishop Gerard of York.'' His last act however (i 109) was a denunciation against Gerard's stiff-necked successor in the ' Eadmer, 89 ; Florence, 1106. * See Eadmer (91), who is copied by Florence (1107). So Will. Malms, v. 417; " Investituram annuli et baailt in- dulsit in perpetuum, retento tantum electi- oiiis et regaliam privtlegio." ' Oar historians are specially full on the matters between Paschal and Henry the Fifth. See Will. Malms, v. 420 et seq. ; Flor. Wig. nil. * The Chronicler takes no notice of ihc synod, except to record the filling up ot the vacant bishopricks and abbeys both ill England and Normandy. Florence adds the comparison with Plegmund. It is now that the Chronicler (1 107) gives the remarkable note of time ; ** Dis wsbs rihtlice ymbc vii gear )>se8 >e se C3mg Henri cynedomes onfeng, and waes Jnet an and fowertigeiSe gear haes he Francan )>iscs Undes weoldan," This way of dating seems less in place here than when Henry of Huntingdon (a 1 8) dates Henry's victory over Lewis (sed above, p. 125) as won ** quinquagesimo secundo anno ex quo Normanni Angliam obtinucrunt." * See above, p. 106. Eadmer (94) dis- tinctly mrntions the share of Anselm in this matter. • See above, p. 107. ' See Eadmer, 91 ; Gcrvase, 1659 ; but T. Stubbs (1710) has altogether another story ; Gerard would not even take a seat ill the Council unless his seat was made equal to that of Anselm. 152 THE XORMAS KIS'GS IS ESGLAXD, northern metrcjiolfs. TlKmas » 1 109-1 1 1 4>, a kinsman of his renowned namesake TLorr.is c:" Bayeux/ The days thai Anselm had spent in acLual pcs-es-icn of his church ha J been few, and most of thein had leen enL Vet he found means :o t^ one of the chief benefactors of i:> maierai fabric. The extension of the eastern limb of Chri>l Church — the vork cf Lanfnnc new seemed loo small — was one in which the name of Ar.sclm stands conpied with the names of his Priors Conrad ar.l Err.uif.- And one of the twin towers which form a special feature of :hi> part of the metropolitan church still bears the name of An>elm, a name already canonized by the voice of the Kn^lish people, tl^iough it was not till ages after that the title of Saint was formailv bestowed on him bv that Rome which he had served so wclL» The ecclesiastical aspect of the reign of the first Henry is further distinguished by a feature which distir.guishes it from all later reigns tifl we come to that of the last, namely an increase in the number of English bishopricks. Under Eadward the number of bishopricks had been lessened;* under the two Williams several bishopricks had changed their places,* but no change was made in tlieir number. Under Henry we see, for the first time since Eadward the Elder, an English diocese divided, on the express ground tliat it was 100 large for the pastoral care of a single Bishop. The great al'bey of Ely lx?came an episcopal church, under Htney (i 109-11.^1. the I>i>hop who had agreed so ill with the Welshmen,* and who U umi in :he Fenland a shelter at once safer and richer than his former scat by the shores of the Menai. Part of the diocese of Lincoln was detached to form a diocese for the new Bishop ; and Ely, with its unrivallec: minster, its great temporal wealth, its temporal powers second only to those of the Palatine lords of Durham, became one of the greatest among the bishopricks of England.' This division of a diocese on the express ground of the spiritual welfare of its inhabitants was quite in accordance with Old- * See the whole controversy in Eadmcr, 97 et seqq., who (lOO) speaks of Thomas as being ** prohibitus a canoiiicis suis." See the oiher side in T. Stubbs, 1711. 1712. William of Ncwburgh (i. 3), who draws a very black portrait of Gerard, has nothing but good to say of Thomas, He describes his death by a singular kind of martyrdom. • See the account of the building, Eadmcr, 108; Gervase. 1 294; Willis, Canterbury, 17, 72. This is the building whic'i was consecrated in 1 1 30. See T. Wykes in anno. » The bull of Alexander the Third about the cat:onization of Anselm, which came to nothing, will \»t found in Angl'i Sacra, ii. 177. It seems to have been under the sixth Pope of that name that Anselm. in the words of Dean Church (301), "suffered the indig.iity of a cauoui- zation at the hands of Borgia." * See vol. ii. pp. 53, 271. '-' See vol. iv. p. 280 et seqq. ^ See above, p. 1 40. ' On the foundation of the sec of Ely, see Eadmer, 95; Florence, 1 109; Wi.l. Malms. V. 445 ; and Gest. Pont. 325. Its wealth is noticed along with that of Lincoln (" quibus opuleniiores nescio si habcat Anglia '•). Hist. Nov. ii. 3a. BISHOPKICA'S OF ELY AND CARLISLE, 153 English precedent ; but it ran counter to the feudalizing notions of the time. A bishoprick, like a kingdom, was coming to be looked on as a property rather than an office ; jurisdiction, and the temporal profits of jurisdiction, were beginning to be more thought of than the strictly pastoral work of a Wulfstan or an Anselm. To many Bishops of those days a proposal to divide their dioceses would have sounded much as a proposal to divide his dominions would sound to a temporal prince. The first division of the vast Mid-English diocese was largely the work of Anselm, and it was a work so worthy of him that one almost wonders that it was not then, instead of more than four hundred years later, that the work was carried further. The diocese of Lincoln still remained the greatest in England; it still stretched from the Thames to the Humber; nine shires still looked to their spiritual centre on the hill for which the elder Dorchester had been refused, to the temple built on high, with its foundations like the ground that is established for ever.' But, if we give credit to Anselm for this reform, we must give credit to Henry also, who, long after Anselm's death, added yet another to the roll of English bishopricks. This was by the creation of the new see of Carlisle, in the land which the late King had conquered, and in the city which both the late and the present King had taken such pains to strengthen.* The eccle- siastical allegiance of the new English possession of Cumberland had been as doubtful and fluctuating as its political allegiance. York, Durham, Glasgow, and the defunct see of Hexham, all had or had had rights or claims over it Henry decided in favour of York ;' but he afterwards settled the matter in a yet more satisfactory way by making the newly- won province a separate diocese, and the newly- won city an episcopal see. In that land even William Rufus had planted English colonists ;* and, now that the un-English influence of Robert of Meulan had passed away, Henry did not scruple to give the spiritual care of the last- won possession of the English Crown, the last-planted settlement of the English people, to a prelate whose name of ^thelwulf (1133-1156) is sure proof of his English birth." While the reign of Henry was thus marked by the creation of two English bishopricks, one of them among the greatest of their number, it receives a more special character in ecclesiastical history from its being the time when a new monastic order arose, an order which has, * Psalm Ixxviii. 67-69. sition on the part of Glasgow are collected » See above, pp. 78, 107. by Mr. Haddan, ii. 36. 31, 34. ^thcl- ' See the passages collected by Mr. wulf died in 11 56, and the see then lay Hadiian in the Councils and Ecclesiastical vacant till 1219. iEthelwulf, according to Documents, ii. la. * See above, p. 79. Matthew Paris (Hist. Ang. i. 345), was ' The passages bearing on the founda- Henry's own confessor ; ** cui peccaia tion of the see of Carlisle and the oppo- solitus fuerat confiteri." 154 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. more than any other, impressed its memory upon the sceneiy and upon the popular mind of England. Zealous prelates had displaced the secular canons from their churches to make room for the more austere Benedictines. But the rule of Saint Benedict, at least as it was practised in their owti limes, seemed not austere enough for some of his votaries. We have seen under the Conqueror two movements in different directions, the introduction of the Cluniacs ^ as a step in favour of strictness, and the introduction of the Austin canons* as a step towards something intermediate between the regular and the secular life. But in the early days of Henry the famous order of Citeaux had its beginnings in foreign lands, and, before his reign had ended, it had made its way into die knd from whence its founder sprang. An historian of mingled blood feeb his English patriotism stir within him as he tells how it was a countryman of his own who had found out the way which in his day was deemed the surest path to heaven.' Harding or Stephen,* an £lnglishman by birth and blood, a monk first at Sherborne and afterwards at Molesmes in the diocese of Langres, had joined his Abbot Robert {1109) in leaving the last- named house to seek for a higher degree of perfection in the new house of Citeaux, soon to become so much more famous than its parent. Of Citeaux Harding was the third Abbot ; he became the true founder of the order which bore the name of the house, and he had the honour of receiving within its walls the man who raised the Cistercian name to the highest pitch of glory ."^ From Citeaux to Clairvaux went forth {1116) the holy Bernard, the last of the Fathers, the counsellor of Popes and Kings. And presently, while both Bernard and Harding still lived, the new order began to make its appearance in England and especially in that northern part of England whose valleys and river-sides have received a new character from its settlement among them. The order indeed made its first settlement in the south, where William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, planted (11 28) a colony of its monks at Waverley in Surrey.* Other houses in other parts of the king- dom soon arose ; Cistercian churches were founded at Tintem and at Neath in the lands newly won from the Briton ; but the true En^ish * See vol. iv. p. 340. ^ Harding was doubtless his baptismal ' Sec vol. iv. p. 343. name, and Stephen the name which Ik ' Will. Malms, iv. 334. ** Ejus diebus took on entering religion, just as Orderc [Willelmi Rufi] rcligio Cistcllensis coepit, became Vital. So Will. Malms, u. s.; *'Is qux nunc optima via summi in coelum fuit Hardingus nomine, apud Anglos non processiis et creditur et dicitur. De qua ita reconditis natalibus procreatus." lu hie loqui suscepti operis non videtur esse the next chapter he is *' Hardingus, qui et contrarium, quod ad Angliae gloriam per- Stephanus." tineat, qux talem virum produxerit qui * See the early history of the Cistercian hujusce religionis fuerit et auctor et order in the Monasticon, v. 220 ; Milmau. mediator. Noster ille, et nostra puir in iii. 331. palxstra primi xvi tirocinium cucurrit.*' * Monasticon. ▼. 237 ; ^thelred, 338. THE CISTERCIAN ORDER, 155 home of the order was in that Northumbrian land where the monks of the elder order had made so little progress.^ A colony sent by Saint Bernard himself was received (i 131) by Walter of Espec, and, under his care and that of Archbishop Thurstan, it grew into the Cistercian house of Rievaux.' Presently new converts came from the bosom of older founda- tions. As Earl Siward's chiu-ch at Galmanho had grown into Saint Mary's Abbey,' so now (1132) Saint Mary's Abbey sent forth thirteen of its monks to make the beginning of the still more famous house of Fountains.* A new feature was thus added to the life of England. The older Benedictine houses had either been planted in towns, or else a town had grown up around the monastic precincts. The Cistercians of set purpose lived in the wilderness, and for the most part they pitched their dwellings in spots of striking natural beauty. Only a few of their houses rose to any great wealth or to any historic fame. But it is the Cistercian houses whose names live on the lips of men. The ruined abbey is far more often a house of the Cistercian order than of any other. The Benedictine houses have commonly either been wholly swept away, or else left, in a more or less perfect state, as cathedral or parochial churches. The Cistercian church, plain and stem in its architecture,* often more beautiful in its decay than it could ever have been in its day of perfection, remains as a far more living witness of a state of things which has passed away than those buildings which still survive to be applied to the uses of our own times. On the death of Anselm, Henry fell back into one of the worst practices of his brother, and kept the see of Canterbury vacant for five years (iio9-iii4).' This was a distinct breach of promise;^ but even here he showed a marked difference from his brother, in the care which he took not to interfere with the possessions of the monks and the works which they were carrying on.* At last the metropolitan see had again a pastor in the person of a Norman, Ralph (1114-1122), formerly Abbot of Seez, to whom Anbelm had given the dependent bishop- rick of Rochester. The English historian is careful to mark that Ralph, * See vol. iv. p. 451. ' WUl. Neob. i. 14; John of Hexham. 257; ^thelred, 338; Monasticon, v. j8o. ' See voL iv. p. 45 J. « WUl. Nenb. i. 14; John of Hexham, 357 ; ^thelred, 338 ; Monasticon, v. 286. Foimtaiiu was quite an exceptional case among the Cisterdaa houses for its wealth and dignity. * William of Malmesbury (iv. 337). ' without distinctly mentioning the archi- tecture strictly so called, is strong on the plainness of the Cistercian churches. They are unlike the other orders, who are not satisfied, *' nisi multicoloribus parietes picturis renideant, et soleni ad lacunar sollidtent.*' • Eadmer, 109. ^ See above, p. iii. Compare an in- cidental notice in the Winchester Annals, 1 109, which also savours of William Rufus; "Geroldus abbas Theokesberiz, regis animuni nolens nee valens saturare muneribus, abbatia relicta, ad ecclesiam Wintoniensem, unde professus fuerat, re- versus est." • Eadmer, 109. The diocese was ad- minis'ered by Ralph, who succeeded to the archbishoprick. 156 THE GORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. though doubtless the choice of the King, was raised to the metro- politan throne by a process which he is well pleased to dwell upon, as having at least the likeness of popular election.* During Ralph's primacy the strife between England and Rome still went on, and neither King nor Primate failed in his duty. Again Paschal (1099- 1 1 18) dared to declare the laws of England to be contrary to the so- called canons of the Fathers,* and deemed it \\Tong that the King and people of England had given themselves a Patriarch without consulting hira. Both Paschal and his next successor but one, Calixtus (1118- 1 124), of whom we have already heard, did not scruple to intrigue with a recusant Primate of York to undermine the rights of the Kentish metropolis. A long dispute followed, in which Archbishop Thurstan of York refused the accustomed profession to Canterbury, and, at the council of Rheims (11 19), when all men seemed against England and her King, he received consecration from the liands of Pope Calixtus and certain French Bishops.' It is not easy to reconcile the Northern and Southern versions of this business ; but it seems dear that Thurstan sacrificed the interests of England to the interests of his own see, and King Henry, no bad judge of the interests of England, rewarded his adhesion to the enemies of his country with banishment from all his dominions.* He would not even listen to the prayer of Pope Calixtus in his behalf, when, in the conference at Gisors,* the Pontiff solemnly confirmed the ancient customs of England and Nor- mandy." It was only by dint of good service done to the King in * Eadmcr, 110. The King was at first inclined to appoint Faricius, Abbot of Abingdon (compare the Abingdon History, ii. 387). Then he determines upon Ralph ; *• Vellent tantummodo monachi, natuque majores, et populi Cantuarienses ; nee mora, requiritur quale sit in istis velle eorum et vota omnium inveniuntur esse unum. Rcfertur in turbam ncgotii summa, et in laudem Dei laxantur pro hoc omnium oru. S!c etectus in poutificatum Cantuariensem Radulphus Rofl^ensis episcopus est." * Compare the Winchester Annals, 1 1 16; "Quaesivit pa} a a rcge quasdam consuetudiues quas nunquam prse lecessores sui habuerant.'* * Sec above, p. 126. Roger of How- den (i. 174) mentions that Randolf Flam- bard was sent to forbid the consecration, but came too late. * Sec Eadmer, 125; and compare the York verfion of T. Stubbs, 1 715 -171 7, and the Durham version of Simeon, 11 19. Eadmcr makes Henry say, seemingly with reference to the well-known story of Eadgar, "quod nee pro amissione coroiue suae, utpote spatio septem aimoruro ex- communicatus, propositutu suum io hac causa permutarct." * Henry's answer (Eadmer, 116) to the Pojie's oHer to absolve him from his promise is worthy of all remembraoce; '* Dtcit se, quouiam apostolicus est, me a nde quam poUicitus sum absoluturom, si contra eandem fidem Thurstanum Eborad recepero, non videtur regiae honestati con- venire hujusccmodi absolutioni conscnure. C^is enini fidem suam cuivis pollicenii am- plius crederet, cum eam mei exemplo tani facile absolutione annihilari posse videret?" * Eadmer, 125. "Rex ii papa im- petravit, ut omnes consuetudines, quat pater suus in Anglia habuerat et in Normannia, sibi concederet, et maxime at neminem ;iliquando legati officio in Anglia fungi permitteret, si non ipse aliqua pr^ cipua querela exigcntc, et quae ab archi- episcopo Canluariorum caBtcrisque episcopis regni terminari non posset, hoc fieri a papa postularet." DISPUTES BETWEEN CANTERBURY AND YORK. 157 bringing about the peace with the King of the French (1120) that Thurstan earned his restoration.^ But the endless strife went on at intervals, both during the remaining years of the primacy of Ralph and during that of his successor William of Corbeil.^ Archbishop William (11 23-1 126), a Norman like his predecessor, does not bear so good a character as his predecessor among the writers of the time.' In his own church of Canterbury his nomination gave offence, because, though a canon regular, he was not in striciness a monk, as it was alleged that all his predecessors, save only the usurping Stigand, had been since the time of Augustine. His election, we are told, was wholly the work of the King and the Bishops, both the monks and the laity withstanding it as far as they might.* But his primacy is chiefly memorable for being the first time when England was humbled by the sight of a stranger usurping the place of her chief pastor. It was row (1124) that a papal Legate, the too famous John of Crema,* not satisfied with discharging his proper legatine functions, dared to displace the Primate of all Britain in his own church on the greatest feast of ihe year.® The only remedy was for the Primate himself to go to Rome, and to come back clothed by Honorius the Second with the powers of a papal Legate in his own personJ More councils were held against the married clergy,* but in va/n Legate, Archbishop, and Bishops put forth their decrees ; the old ^ See Sim. Dun. 11 20; Eadmer, 136; T*. Stubbs, 171 7; John of Hexham, * Through the whole controversy Ead- mer must be compared with the Yorkist T. Stubbs and with such notices as are JjV^m by Simeon. Canterbury has the fH'^^.t: advantage of telling its tale in full (b rough the mouth of a contemporary * The Coiitinuator of Florence (1123) ^<^ Gervase (1662) both sing his praises, ™^ cf. Henry of Huntingdon, De Con- f«^-mptu Mundi, 700, and Gesta Stephani, 6. * The compulsory election, the re- s'** a^nce of the mcnks, earls, and thegns — *^ English words still live on — the over- ^^ ^ming influence of the King and the ■^^ops of Salisbury and Lincoln, are ^"^ I>hically brought out by the Chronicler ^ X 23), who counts a canon regular as a ^^"^rk. See also Simeon, 1 123; Gervase, ^^2. The exception about Stigand •^iciics out when the same question between '^Tks and monks was argued at the elec- of Ralph; set Will. Malm*. Gcst. ►■nt. 126. • His well-known story is told by Henry of Huntingdon (219), whose comment should be studied, and it appears in a mc re elat>orate, and doubtless mythical, shape in the Winchester Annals, 11 25. • This scene stirs up the English spirit of Gervase (1663), who describes at length the unheard-of sight of the mere presbyter sitting with all the Bishops of England at his feet; "Res quam gravi multorum mentes scandalo vulneraverit et inusitate negotii novitas et antiqui rcgni Anglorum detrita libertas satis indicat." ' Ger\'asc. 1663; Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. 7. • One is John of Ciema's own in 1 1 24 ; see the Continuator of Florence in anno; another in 1 127, and another which is graphically described by the Chronicler in IT 29. Archbishop William gets together bishops and abbots, archdeacons, priois, monks, and canons, who were to meet in London, "and J«r scolden sprecon of ealle Godes rihtes." But "]>a hit eall com forC, >a weorS hit eall of earcedaecncs wifes and of preostes wifes |>at hi scolden hi forlxten." 158 THE XORMAX A'lXGS IN ENGLAND. custom of England was too strong for them, and the King no longer gave his countenance to the innovation. By his leave, when the Bishops were gone home, the priests kept their i^ives, as they did aforetime.^ In this time of friendly relations with Scotland the ecclesiastical connexion between the two parts of the island drew closer. It must be borne in mind that, at all events in the belief of York, the northern province of England took in all the dioceses of Scotland, and that, at all events, in the belief of Canterbury, the Primate of all England was also Patriarch of all the British islands.* Scotland meanwhile had no Metropolitan of her own, though a certain superiority over his brethren seems already to be acknowledged in the Bishop of Saint Andrews.* These questions came up more than once during the reign of Hcniy the First, in the case of two men. Englishmen in the strictest sense, who were called to bear ecclesiastical rule in Scotland. The first was the famous Turgot, whom we have already heard of as the confessor and biographer of the holy Queen Margaret.* He was chosen (1107), as we are told, by King Alexander and the clergy and people of Scot- land to the see of Saint Andrews.*^ But, at the moment of Turgot's election, Thomas of York was not yet consecrated; long disputes followed, but in the end Thomas consecrated Turgot and several other Scottish bishops." Alexander seems at the next vacancy to have thought that Canterbury, though the more powerful, was, as being the more distant, the less dangerous claimant of spiritual supremacy.'' Turgot left Saint Andrews, and went, back to his old home at Durham, and the bishoprick of Saint Andrews, the bishoprick of Scotland as it is sometimes called,* remained vacant for some years (i 1 09-1 1 1 5). At last the choice of the King, and, we are told, that of the clergy and people,* fell (11 20) on another English monk, but this time * Chron. Prtrib. 1 1 29. ' 1 must agaiD send the reader to Ead- mer, Simeon, and T. Stubbs ; but all the documents are got together by Mr. Had- dao. Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, ii. 1 59 et scq. See, on theT other hand, the letter of Nicolas Prior of Worcester (202) to Eadmer apainst the claims of York. The claims of Canterbury to jurisdiction over all Britain and Ireland come out constantly in Eadmer. See aI See above, p. 91. being recorded under 1133 and 1134. • In Eadmer, 133, Alexander is made to But I fi d in the list of eclipses in the Art say, " Se in vita sua consensum non prae- de V^; ifier les Dates that the eclipse w s bitunun, ot qnscopai Scotue sobderetur on August 3, 1133, and not in 1135, i6o TflE .\ORMAN KIXCS jy E.VGLAND. heaven and earth had indeed filled no small part of the annals of hi» reign, and his last voyage from England (August 2,1133) ^^^ marked by a sign which to the men of those times seemed one of the most fearful of all. '* The other day that he lay on sleep in the ship, then westered the day over all lands, and was the sun swilk as it were three night old moon, with stars about him at mid-day. Then were men in great wonder and dread, and said that mickle things should come thereafter/' Our native Chronicler, who thus describes a phaenomenon on whith we look with so little awe, goes on to say, **so it did ; for that ilk year was the King dead the other day after Saint Andrew's mass-day in Normandy/'^ Two years passed however between the portent and its fulfilment. Henry, anxious to come back to England, was hinderrd from ¥0 doing by the endless quarreli between the Empress and the young Count her husband. He had been sick before he left England, and these troubles seem to haw made his sickness worse.* At last, in the winter of the thirty-sixth year of his reign (December i, 1 135), he died — the talk of the time said that he died from an unwholesome meal on lampreys — at his favourite ' hunting seat in the Forest of Lions.' His end was all devotion and something more. For we are told that the last words which he spoke about the things of this world w^erc a charge to all around him to keep the peace and to protect the poor.* He took care however, when asked about the succession, to make a last declaration in favour of his daughter. To her personally he bequeathed his dominions, without allotting any crown matrimonial to her husband who had given him so much displeasure. King Henry's body, borne across the whole breadth of Normandy and Wessex, after halting for a while by the tomb of his father,* found its last resting-place in the great minster And the Continuator of Florerce (1133), William of Malmesbury (Hist. Nov. i. 7), Ordciic (900 B, C), and Henry of Hun- tingdon (i2o6), ail either directly place vcyage and eclipse in that year, or else imply a longer stay in Normandy than would be thought from the Chronicle. Ordcric however has one or two signs and wonders at a time oea.er to the King's death. * Chron. Pelrib. 1135. A 5till fuller description of the eclipse is given by the Continuator of Florence, 1 1 32, who goes largely into the philosophy oi the matter. He is copied by John of Hexham, X Sc.iptt. 263. ■ Hen. Hunt. 2206. *' His death is recorded by Wi liam of Malmesbnr}% Hist. Nov. i. 8, who adds a letter from Hugh Archbishop of Rouen to Pope Innocent describing the King's pi. us end, whic h winds up, ** sic io pact quievit ; pacem dedit ei Deus quia pacta dilexit" See also Orderic, 901 B, C, who speaks to the same effect. Henry of Huntingdon does not go iiito the same detail, but he dismisses him with the title of '* rex magnus." * Ord. Vit. 901 C. So the letter ot Archbishop Hi!gh, who adds the comment, "utinam sic fecissent qui thesauros ejus tenebant et tenent/* Cf. Gesta Stephaci. 30, where it is laid to the charge of the Empress that she turned to her own pur- poses what her father had left to pious uses. The C hronicler (i 137) seems rather to lay the blame on Stephen. ^ The details of the embalming aod burial of Henry, or rather the sereral buriab of the diiTerent parts of him, may DEATH OF HENRY. l6l which he had himself reared at Reading.* The first English-born King of the new line, he in whose descendants the green tree was to return to its place, the King who had won Normandy by the strength of England, who had made England the foe of France and the ally of Germany, was not to He either in Norman soil or in any of the older resting-places of the royal dead of England. The King whose reign marks so great an aera in English history had well earned a last home to himself, apart from all other Kings before or after him. Nor was it unfit that the victor of Tinchebrai should sleep on a spot all whose associations were purely English, a spot which had won its earlier place in history as the scene of some of the greatest exploits of Alfred.' § 4. The Reign of Suphen, 1135—1154- The remaining nineteen years of this period of our history, though they are formally marked by the name of a King, were in truth a time of utter anarchy. They mark a time in which the effects of the good order which had been established by the strong hand of Henry were for a while utterly undone. During those nineteen years there could not really be said to be any settled government in the land, and during the greater part of them the Crown was actually disputed in arms by two rival claimants. It was a time of utter wretchedness, such as we may safely say that England never saw before and never saw again. The first days of the Norman Conquest, the civil wars of the days of John, even the Danish invasions themselves, could never have fully equalled the horrors of a time when every man who had the power did that which was right in his own eyes. But, though the immediate work of Henry was undone, his really lasting work lived be studied in Orderic (901 C, D, where his body, which is, first of all, like that of his £ither, rererentially called "soma," afterwards sinks into " pingue cadarer "), in William of Malmesburj (Hist. Nov. i. 10, 13). and in the beginning of the eighth book of Henry of Huntingdon, where one of his embalmers comes to a remarkable^ death, with the comment, ** hie est ultiiuus e maltis quern rex Henricus occidit." William of Newburgh (i. 5) tells the same story with another comment ; '* Sic, cum Helisei mor- tni corpus TiTificarerit mortuum, illius jam mortui corpus mortificaverit vivum." ' The burial at Reading is mentioned VOL. V. : by all our authorities, beginning with the Chronicler. See Will. Malms. Gest. Reg. V. 413; Gest. Pont. .193; where the foundation is said to have been made " pro indictA sibi pcenitenti&.'* • See vol. i. p. 223: Chronn. 871. 1006. I fear however that, when I wrote my first volume, I did not fully understand the force of the words "andlang ^sces- dune to Cwichelmes hbewe." JSsce^dun is not the modem Ashdown Park, but the whole ridge, and the battle was fought at the other end towards Reading. This has been distinctly made out by Mr. James Parker. ^^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H ^ * 1 6a THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. through all. Even this wretched time had its share in wiping out the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered. In the universal slaying and harrying, the ravaging of fields, the burning of towns and castles, no distinction was made between Norman and Englishman, and the work was largely done by the hands of mercen- aries who were strangers to both. The anarchy itself thus led men to forget older national enmities in more present and more wearing wrongs, and it led them too to join as one people in welcoming the return of order under a prince who was as little Norman as he was English. It is in this reign, if the word reign be not utterly out of place, that we hear the last faint echoes of the time when England was inhabited by men who could be pointedly divided into conquerois and conquered. During this reign we hear for the last time, from a very few and very uncertain voices, the word Norman used to imply a distinct class among the inhabitants of England.^ In the next reign the distinction is wholly wiped out; it sturives only in a few legal forms and expressions which are fast losing all practical meaning. The events which followed the death of Henry showed once more, but showed for the last time, that arrangements made for the succes- sion to the English throne before its actual vacancy were of no force. Henry had taken every means in his power to secure the succession of his daughter to his dominions; but his schemes were utterly shattered. Matilda cannot be said ever to have reigned, and her son reigned by virtue of a later compact. On the death of Henry, just as on the death of his father, lawlessness again broke forth, and one special form is said to have been a general raid on the royal deer- parks, so that in a few days hardly a beast of chase was to be seen in the country.* A King however was soon chosen. The old tic between a man and his sister's son' had been felt in all its strength between Henry and the sons of his sister Adela, and it bound him in a special way to her third son Stephen. The support of her son Theobald, the reigning Count of Chartrcs and Blois and now of Champagne, had been the alleged ground of Henry's French wars.* and her younger son, who bore the name of his uncle, stands forth, in political yet more than in ecclesiastical history, as Abbot of Glastonbury, Bishop of Winchester, and Legate of the Holy See. But Stephen, Count of Mortain by his uncle's grant. Count of Boulogne by * Thif come* out in two passages of of them together as •• onmit popahiK An* Henry of Hantingdou, as when beginning glonim." the eighth book he speaks of the reign of ' Gest. Steph. J. Stephen as '* tempus atrocissimum quod * See vol. ii. p. 245. So Gest. Steph. 5. postea per Normannonira rabiosas prodi- * Sec above, pp. 130-124. Theobald liones exarsit." And, in describing the seems not to have been the eldest son of Battle of the Standard, he distinguishes Stephen and Adela. See Will. Neub. i. 4, "Noimanni ct Angli," though he speaks and cf. vol. i. p. 314. ELECTION OF STEPHEN. 163 *Qarriage with the daughter of the last Eustace,* stood highest in Henry's favour, and enjoyed all that he could hope for short of the kingdom. Brave, generous, popular in manners, affable and merry towards men of all classes, gentle and merciful to a fault,'^ Stephen had much in him to win, and even to deserve, the general good will. To Eng- \and he was a stranger both by birth and by descent, and his connexion with Normandy was only through his mother. It was only as the nephew of his imcle that he had any position in either kingdom or duchy. But, by his marriage with a grand-daughter of the holy Margaret, he was the father of children who could trace up their line to the ancient Kings in the only way in which any man could now trace up a legitimate descent either to Cerdic or to William. His popular qualities, his position as in some sort the male representative of the Conqueror, were strengthened in Normandy by the old border hatred to Anjou and by a special dislike to its present Count. Even in England they outweighed the English birth of the Empress and the repeated oaths that had been sworn to her. On his uncle's death, Stephen hastened over to England, and was chosen King with little opposition. Dover and Canterbury are said to have refused him admission ; ' but London and Winchester were zealous on his behalf. The body by whom he was actually chosen seems, as in some earlier elections, to have consisted of the London citizens and of such other of the chief men of the land as could be got together at once.* Roger, the famous Bishop of Salisbury, who had administered the oath of allegiance to Matilda,' supported him, and he had the zealous help of his brother at Winchester, to whom writers on both sides pointedly say that he owed the Crown.* After some hesitation, Arch- bishop William performed the consecrating rite^ (December 22 (?), ''35); and the new King was generally acknowledged. Even Robert Earl of Gloucester came over and did homage,* though his own special * Stephen's wife Matilda was the ^Dghter of Eustace of Boulogne and of Mary third daughter of Malcolm and Mar- S^i'et, and sister of Henry's first Queen. See WilUam of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. iii.49. This better side of Stephen's character coQicf out in all the portraits of him. In ^aiiam of Mahnesbury (Hist. Nov. i. la) he is '* lenis et exorabilis hostibus, afiabilis OiUnibus ; " he speaks of his " dulcedo in procnissis ; " elsewhere (16) he calls him ** xxiansuetissimus homo," and tells (14) ho^nr ** quom esset comes, facilitate moram ^^ communione jocandi, consedendi, con- ^^scendi etiam cum infimis, amorem tan- ^^xn demeritDs quantum vix mente aliquis concipere queat." So Richard of Hex- ham, 312, calls him "virtantx mansue- tudinis et benignitatis, ut etiam inimici ejus ad ipsum conversi praeter spem suam in illo misericordiam invcnirent." Some- what different colours will be found in the Continuator of Florence, 1139, and in Henry of Huntingdon, 226 b, ' Gervase, X Scriptt. 1340. • See Appendix DD. ' See above, p. 135. • Gest. Steph. 5; Will. MaUus. Hist. Nov. I. II. ' The scruples of the Archbishop are described most fully in the GestaStephani, 6. • Gesta Stephani, 8 ; Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. 14. a i64 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, panegyrist takes care to tell us that he did so oniy on condition of Stephen keeping all his engagements, especially towards himself.* As regards the kingdom at large, those engagements took the form of two successive charters.' The former is little more than a formal document granting again the good laws, customs, and liberties which the King's men had enjoyed in the days of his uncle King Henry and in the more distant days of King Eadward. The second charter, which is far fuller and goes far more into detail, was put forth at Oxford ( 1 1 36) before the iirst year of his reign was out. Stephen had just come back victorious from driving back a Scottish invasion,' and he had received a letter from Pope Innocent, in which the Pontiff^ while fully acknowledging the facts of his popular election and eccle- siastical consecration, took upon him to use expressions of friendship which were construed as further confirming Stephen's right to the Crown.* On the strength, it would seem, of this papal acknowledge- ment, the Bishops took an oath of allegiance in conditional terms, somewhat like that taken by Earl Robert. They swore, it is said, to be faithful to Stephen so long as he should preserve the liberties and discipline of the Church.* Such a form of oath, a form which we may be sure that any earlier King would have cast aside with indignation, a form in which men made their duty as members of the commonwealth conditional on the observation of the vague and undefined privileges of one class, a form which might involve an appeal from the King and his Witan to the judgement of a foreign power, shows how low English kingship had fallen, now that it was no longer embodied in the great ruler before whom a year back all men had trembled. In answer to this conditional submission, King Stephen put forth his charter. In this document he describes himself as chosen King by the consent of the clergy and people, a form in itself constitutional enough, but which implies a slurring over of that civil election of an English King which went before the ecclesiastical election which formed an essential part of the crowning rite. But Stephen goes on to use words such as no English King had ever used before him. He records his consecration by Archbishop William ; but, as if consecra- tion by the Patriarch of all Britain were not enough, the Primate is further described by the new-fangled title of Legate of the Holy » Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. 14. " Ho- inagium regi fecit sub conditione quadam, scilicet, quamdia ille dignitatem suam integre custodiret et sibi pacta servaret." * On the difference between the two charters of Stephen, see Stubbs, Select Charters, 113, 114; Constitutional His- tory, 310, 321. The second charier is given by William of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. i. 15. His version leaves out an important clause at the end ; " Haec omnia concedo et confirmo, salva regia H jusbi digniiate mea.** ' See below, p. 1 7 2. * On this letter, which seems to be given only by Richard of Hexham, X Scriptt. 313, see Appendix DD. * Hist. Nov. i. 15. "Jurarerunt q«- copi fidelitatem regi quamdiu ille h*bertatem ecclesix et vigorem disciplinsB pooserraret.*' STEPHEN* S CHARTERS. 165 Roman Church ; and, by a deeper degradation still, the King stoops to refer to the letter of Innocent, and adds as part of his claim to his Crown that he, the King chosen-, crowned, and anointed, had been further confirmed in his kingdom by Innocent, Pontiff of the Holy Roman See.^ William the Great would hardly have set it forth as part of his formal st}'le that his claim to the Crown of England had been approved at Rome. But, when William the Great sought for an approval of his claim at Rome, when he received his crown at a solemn festival from the hands of Roman Legates, he was making ready the way for this further step in the downward course. Men now dared to imply that the choice of a King of the English needed the confirmation of a Bishop of Rome. Eighty years later such an acknowledgement was to bear its fruit in the vassalage of the Crown of England to the Roman See. The charter itself which is ushered in with so strange a preamble is chiefly taken up with ecclesiastical matters.* There are indeed a few secular provisions. Stephen binds himself to observe all the good laws and ancient customs, and to root out all the misdoings of his sheriffs and other officers. The forests which were held by the Crown in the days of the two Williams he will keep, but those which were added by Henry he will give up.' But the chief provisions relate to the customs, privileges, and possessions of the Church, which are to remain as they were at the death of his grandfather King William. He promises to give up the feudal rights which had been brought in by the ingenuity of Randolf Flambard, and to forbear from taking the revenues of vacant bishopricks and abbeys to his own use. And he promises also to put an end to a practice for which there was much less to be said, but which seems to have been common in the reign of Henry, namely that of seizing to the King's use the personal property of deceased churchnien, even to the prejudice of those in whose favour they had made their wills. Stephen in short, as a writer of the time emphatically says, promised whatever he was asked,* and the churchmen seem to have been the most diligent in asking. The complaints of Stephen's breaches of all his engagements are many and bitter; but even a writer on the other side is ready to attribute them less to any evil intention on Stephen's part than to the * WilL Malms. Hift. Nor. i. 15. "Ego Stephen promise the abolition of the Stephantis« Dei gratia, assensu cicri et Kanegeld, a promise which does not populi in regem Angliac elcctus. et a appear in the charter. See Stubbs, Select domino Willelmo archiepiscopo CantuariaB Charters, 114. He adds, " Hacc princi- et sanctae ecclcsi« Romanac legato con- paltter Deo vovit et alia, sed nihil horum sccratus, et ab Innocentio sanctse Ro- tenuit." manae sedis pontiBce postmodum confir- * Will. Neub. i. 4. "Pkctus est qux- niatus." cunque pracsules et proceres exigere volue- ^ See Appendix DD. runt, quae postea per ejus perfidiam in ' Henry of Huntingdon, 221 h, makes irritum cuncta cesserunt.** 1 66 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. influence of bad counsellors and to the force of the wretched circum- stances in which he found himself.^ The election of Stephen, a man who had himself sworn to the suc- cession of another candidate for the Crown, can hardly fail to call to our minds a more illustrious election of the same kind nearly seventy years earlier. What Harold had sworn to William ^nust remain for ever uncertain ; but there is no reason to doubt that he had taken an oath of such a kind that it could at least be plausibly given out that he had broken it by accepting the Crown. Stephen, and the whde nobility of England with him, had sworn far more distinctly to receive Matilda as their sovereign on the death of her father. In the teeth of this oath, Stephen accepted the Crown to which he was chosen, seemingly with the general good will, certainly with no open opposition at the moment. What was the legal and moral aspect of such an election on the part either of the electors or the elected ? Had no oath on the other side ever been taken, nothing could have been said against Stephen's election. He was in fact the most obvious choice. Unless the now aged Eadgar was still living,* the male line of Cerdic and the male line of William had alike come to an end. The King of Scots might by the spindle-side be deemed the representative of the old West-Saxon royalty, and, looking at the matter with the experience of seven hundred years, we might think that no course could have been better than to unite the whole island under one rule, and that the rule of such a prince as David. But we may be sure that such a choice would have been altogether unacceptable to the great mass of English- men, whether of Old-English or of Norman descent. Of the descend- ants of the Conqueror by the female line, by far the most promising, in his personal qualities, was Stephen's elder brotlier, Theobald of Champagne, a son worthy of his mother, and in every respect one of the best princes of his age. But Theobald must have seemed a stranger in Normandy, and yet more so in England, while Stephen, the favourite nephew of his uncle, was well known and beloved in both countries. Stephen's continental principality, the county of Boulogne, was one which had already been connected with England in more ways than one. One of Stephen's predecessors had, however unwisely, been called over to England by the voice of at least a part of the English people,' and men may have thought, in the days of the first as well as of the last Henry, that such a landing-place on the mainland might not be an useless possession for an English King. A hundred years before, we can well believe that the national voice, in Normandy at least if not in England, would have been raised in favour of the eldest son of the late King, a son so well beloved of his father and in many * Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. 16. * See vol. Ui. p. 518. ' Sec vol. iv. p. 74, VALIDITY OF STEPHEN'S ELECTION. 167 respects so worthy to reign. Earl Robert, at once soldier and scholar,* might, if personal qualities alone had been looked to, have been placed on a level with David and far above Stephen. But the days had passed when either Englishmen or Normans were likely to choose a sovereign who was not of legitimate birth. Robert was the acknow- ledged son of his fatjiier ; as a King's son, he was held to be first among the nobles of the land \ " but it does not seem that any voice was openly raised for bestowing on him either the kingly crown or the ducal coronet. We hear only a vague rumour that there were some who suggested to him to put forward his own pretension, but that he thrust any thoughts of the kind aside.' We can hardly doubt that either David, Theobald, or Robert would have made a far better King than Stephen ; but, as things stood, we cannot wonder that he was preferred to all of them. The only thing that stood in his way was the oath by which he and all the great men of the land were bound to receive Matilda as the successor of her father. His partisans alleged, when Archbishop William hesitated to crown him, that the oath which they had taken was a constrained oath, extorted by a will which they dared not resist, and that such an oath was not binding. A more daring party, among them Hugh the Bigod of Norfolk, took on themselves to say, with very little likelihood of truth, that the late King had changed his mind on his death-bed, and had made his last recommendation in favour of his nephew and not of his daughter.* In later years the same argimients seem to have been brought up again and to have been strengthened by a new one. The legitimacy of the Empress's birth was called in question, on the ground of the old tale which Anselm had cast aside by a formal judgement, the tale that her mother Eadgyth or Matilda had been a professed nun at the time of her marriage.* The cause of Stephen was however less powerfully helped by any of these technical objections than by the general dislike of both Normans and English to the Angevin husband of Slatilda, stranger as he was to all of them.' The election of Stephen was doubtless a lawful one ; the moral guilt of Stephen and those who broke their oaths along with him may be left to casuists. Their oaths at least could hardly be binding on the citizens of London and * William of Malmesbury (▼. 447) en- competebat, regnum cedere quam pra- larges to the Earl on bis bappy union of sumptive sibi usuq^are." the two characters. * See Appendix DD. » Sec Appendix RB. * See Appendix DD. ' Gest. Steph. 8. ** Robertus, comes ' See the Continuation of Florence, vol. Gbomiz, filius regis Henrici, sed notbus, i. p. 276 of Thorpe's edition; **Volente ▼ir probati ingenii landabilisque prudentiae, igitur G. comite cum uxore sua, quae cum de regni susceptione, patre defuncto, haeres erat, in regnum succedere, juramenti at fama erat, admoneretur, saniori prae- sui male recordantes, regem eum suscipere ▼entus consilio, nullatenus adquievit, dicens noluemnt, dicentes, * aUenigena non reg- aequius esse filio sororis suae, cai justios nabit super nos.' " 1 68 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Winchester, who freely exercised their ancient right of sharing in the choice of the King who should reign over them. If any one had a right to complain, it was the men of the North, who could hardly have had any share in the action of the men of London. But this was equally true of almost every election both before and after the Conquest,* and the northern part of England was, as it turned out, the part in which Stephen's government met with the least practical opposition. In short, Stephen may stand condemned as an oath-breaker ; but he was no usurper, in the sense in which that word is vulgarly used. In this case, exactly as in the case of Harold, we find the act looked on in different ways in his own generation and in that which followed it The writers of his own time are loud in condemnation of his perjury, but it is only of his perjury that they speak. In a later stage, when the son of his rival was firm on the throne, the doctrine of female suc- cession took root under a King who by the spindle-side sprang from both William and Cerdic, but who by the spear-side had nothing to do with either. Then it was that men began to find out that Stephen had been guilty, not only of breaking his oath, but also of defrauding the heir to the Crown of her lawful right.* But, if the choice of Stephen was a lawful one, if it was, as things then stood, a natural one, it could not be said to be a wise one in itself. Stephen was a more amiable man, most likely he was morally a better man, than his uncle ; but he had none of his uncle's gifts for ruling a kingdom in those days. His character and what came of it is summed up in the few pithy words of the native Chronicler; "The traitors understood that he mild man was and soft and good, and no justice did not." " On this King's time was all unfrith and evil and robbery ; for against him rose soon the rich men that were traitors.'** Henry, with all that was blameworthy in him, had done justice ; that is, he had kept a strong hand on evil-doers great and small, and under him the land had had peace. Stephen is not personally charged with any- thing like the evil deeds of his uncle ; but under him the reign of law came to an end. A few occasional acts of vigour, one might rather say, of violence, were a poor substitute for the regular, if stern, administration of Henry. What Henry began he commonly finished ; of Stephen it was specially remarked that his grand beginnings for the most part led to very small endings.* It would seem that a false esti- mate of Stephen's character had been formed during Henry's lifetime. ' Sec vol. iii. p. 38. juste prjeoccupaverat. Semper aatetn ■ See Appendix DD. vulpes latcbat sub pcctore." ' Chron. Petrib. 1 135, 1 137. It is * Gervase (X Scriptt. 1370) remarks rather hard measure when the V/inchester that " Mos erat regis niulta strenuiter Annalist says, 1 1 35, *'Hoc anno rex incipere, pauca laudabiliter finirc." Cf. omnibus magnatibus regni sui amabilem se Hen. Hunt. 226 6. exhibebat, metuens sibt qood rcgnum in- THE ANARCHY, 169 In Normandy at least, the Chronicler emphatically says, "They weened that he should be all so as his eme was." * Men thought that a man who was personally brave, generous, kind and condescending to all classes, would be sure to make a good King. They thought that his rule would be lighter, that his demands on their purses would be smaller, than those of Henry had been. They were indeed deceived. Instead of the yoke of one master, they were left to the ^oads of a thousand. Instead of the regular exactions of a single King, they were left to the endless robberies of every tm-bulent baron in the land. Henry was before all things a King ; he was always a statesman ; he was, when need called for it, a soldier. Stephen was neither a statesman, nor, in the higher sense, a soldier. He was always a gallant knight and a courteous gentleman, but a King never. The native Chronicler sets down the whole nineteen years during which Stephen held the kingly tide as one time of anarchy and evil of evefy kind. Yet even these wretched years admit of some distinctions for the better and for the worse between one part of them and another. The whole time was one of confusion and lawlessness as compared with the rule of Henry, but the worst evils did not at first break forth in all their fulness. For several years at the beginning of his reign Stephen lived in comparative peace ; that is to say, he had to deal with nothing worse than isolated revolts of his barons and Scottish invasions — growing into conquests — of the Northern shires. These were burthens easily to be borne as compared with the general break-up of society which followed the open assertion of the rights of the Empress. The men who won the fight at Northallerton, the fight of the Standard, were engaged in a national war in which they have our sympathy as much as the men who fought at Brunanburh or at Flodden. But we can have no sympathy for either side in the civil war which followed. No doubt there were in both armies men who fought for Stephen or for Matilda out of conscientious loyalty to one side or the other. There is something specially pleasing in the faithful attachment of the sons of Henry to their half-sister ; yet it was simply a case of that misapplied loyalty which, for the sake of the sup- posed rights of a single man, is ready to bring the horrors of civil war on a whole nation. And loyalty to Matilda might have seemed more honourable, had it not taken the form of a breach of allegiance already sworn to Stephen. Whatever may have been the personal guilt of Stephen, or of any others who broke the oaths exacted by Henry, Stephen was, as regarded the nation, a lawfully chosen King ; he had not been guilty of any oppression which could justify revolt ; his chief fault was a lack of power to remedy the evils of a state of things which * Chron. Petrib. 1137. 170 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. his enemies presently made ten times worse. We may therefore so far take the side of Stephen as to condemn the attempt to displace him in favour of Matilda ; but, when the war had once broken out, there was nothing to choose between one side and the other. Neither the King nor Earl Robert can be personally charged with any acts of cruelty going beyond the ordinary licence of warfare in those days. But it is certain that they did not — Stephen at least, we may be sure, could not— hinder those frightful doings of their followers which make these nineteen years stand out by themselves without a parallel in oar history. In truth their followers were followers only in name. Men professed to take up arms for the King or for the Empress, wfaik what they really sought for was unrestrained licence of evil doing.' Stephen also lies specially open to the charge, though no doubt all the leaders on cither side were open to it also, of fighting his battles with mercenaries of all kinds. The land was overrun by strangers, speciallj Bretons and Flemings, among whom one favourite leader of Stephen, William of Ypres, has made himself a name in the history of the time.' The presence of these men was at the time an unmixed evil, and thej drew on themselves the common hatred of all classes in the kingdom ; but they may incidentally have had their share also in bringing natives of the soil of all classes together in one common loathing for the foreigner. This goes on during the whole time of the civil war. At last, partly through mere exhaustion, partly through the death of Eaii Robert, the war slackened on the side of Matilda, and the last few years of Stephen were, like the first, a time of comparative quiet Then came the compromise by which peace was at once restored, and the way was opened for the second Henry to do over again the work of the first. Then at last Stephen was King. Up to that time there had probably been no moment of his nominal reign at which he had been in full possession of the royal authority in every part of the kingdom. The reign or anarchy of Stephen thus falls naturally into three periods. There is, first, the time of the Scottish war and of isolated revolts ( 1 135-1 139) ; secondly, the time of the general civil war from the landing of Matilda (1139-1147); thirdly, the time of comparative peace, ^ So William of Malmesbury (Hist. He says that there were joined to them Nov. iii. 50) says of most of the Earls of ** non solum advenz, sed etiam indigeBZ the time, " Erant juvencs et leres, et qui milites, qui pacem regis Htnrici odnwU^ mallent equitationum discursus quam pa- quod sub ea tenui victu vitam tnosi- cem." *' Equitatio " here has the meaning gebant." William of Ypres often appears which is borne in a more technical way by in the history, as Hist. Not. i. 17; Ord. *' caballicatio." Vit. 916 C; John Hex. 370. His earl* " The coming of these strangers and dom is doubtful. See Stubb«, Const. Hist, their doings are set forth in Gest. Stcph. i. 362. 97 ; WilL Malms Hist. Nov. i. 14, ii. 34. DAVID OF SCOTLAND, I7X after the death of Robert and withdrawal of Matilda, taking in the dealings between Henry and Stephen and the final settlement (1147- 1154). And in this case, as the relations with Scotland are now of special importance, and as they have not much connexion with the ^events of the second period, it may be better to begin with a sketch of the affairs of the northern part of the island. The reigning king of Scots was the famous David (i 124-1 153), the son of Malcolm and Margaret, the uncle alike of the Empress Matilda and of Stephen's Queen of the same name.* In Scottish history he may almost be called the creator of the more recent kingdom, the great strengthener of its ecclesiastical and feudal elements. Closely .connected with the reigning house of England, he had spent much time at the court of his brother-in-law, and, like his father, he encouraged the presence in his kingdom of settlers from England, both of Norman and of Old-English blood. His praises as a man and as a King, as a pattern of every Christian and princely virtue, are loudly sung by writers both in England and in his own kingdom.* We have seen him zealous for the succession of his Imperial niece, and as more than once acting as her counsellor.' The election of Stephen, to the prejudice of claims for which he was so zealous and to which he had been the first to swear, supplied David with causes or excuses for breaking the peace which had now lasted for so many years between England and Scotland. He was now undisputed master of his own kingdom, having put down a revolt of the hostile house of Moray. That revolt has been thought worthy of record in a fragmentary notice in one of our national Chronicles, and the man who quelled it was of English birth. He was Eadward the son of Siward, seemingly that Siward Bam who had shared in Hereward's warfare at Ely, and who had been set free from his bonds for one moment by the dying bidding of the Conqueror.* Thus strengthened, David deemed himself fully a match for a King who was sure to reign over a divided kingdom. Stephen was hardly on his throne before the King of Scots, stirred up, it is said, by a letter from his niece, had entered England under cover of asserting her rights (1136).* He » Sec above, p. 139. ' The great panegyric of David is that given of him by ^theired in his letter to Duke Henry (X Scriptt. 347). See also pp. 346, 368. Compare also John of Hexham, 281 ; Will. Malms, ii. aaS, v. 400; while even Serlo (X Scriptt. 331) makes it his business to explain that it was nr»t throogh cowardice that David fled at t^ie Battle of the Sundard ; ** £t tunc quamvis Martis dextrara non fugit at timidus, Sed cum hostes praevalerent vltavit ut providus.** Fordun of course (v. 31, 35) has much to say in honour of ** generis sui splendor David." * See above, pp. 134, 137. * Chron. Wig. 1130. See Orderic, *joi D, 703 A for **£duardus Siuuardi filius, qui sub Eduardo rege tribunus Merciorum fuit, princeps militiae et consobrinus David regis. ' See Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 189, and vol. iv. p. 482. * So the author of the Gesta (34, 35), 173 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, took all the northern fortresses, the new stronghold of Carlisle among them; Bamborough alone stood out. Wherever he went, he took oaths and hostages in the name of the Empress.* The news of this inroad reached Stephen at Oxford, where he had just put forth his second charter.* He at once marched northward with all speed ; * he found David preparing for an attack on Durham ; * but no military operations followed. The two Kings agreed on tenns of peace. The rights of Matilda seem to have been forgotten. David perha^ remembered that Stephen's own Matilda stood to him in the same degree of kindred, and that, special promises apart, he was in no uraj called on to exalt the daughter and grandchildren of one sister at the expense of the daughter and grandchildren of another.* Nothing was said on behalf of the Empress or her sons ; but David seems to have thought himself clear from all guilt of perjury, because he himself either declined or was not asked to do any personal homage to Stephen.'' But he did not scruple to treat with Stephen as sovereign of England, to restore to him part of the conquests which he had made in the name of his niece, and to accept a grant of another part, if not in his own name, yet in that of his son. The Northumbrian fortresses were given back to Stephen, but the new possession of England, woo by Rufus and strengthened by Henry, was again separated from the immediate allegiance of the English CroA^Ti. Henry, the son of King David, was also the son of Matilda the daughter of Waltheof. In that character he was now held to have the same vague claim to the earl- doms of his grandfather which had been put forth on behalf of Gospatric as the descendant through his mother of the elder line of Northumbrian Earls.^ The hereditary doctrine, the doctrines of repre- sentation and female succession,' had so far grown that, as men were beginning to think that a woman might herself fill the highest office of who tells us hor/ David was *' zelo jnstitiae succensus." Henry of Huntingdon (322) takes another line ; ** Rex Scotlomm, quia sacramcntum fecerat fitlae regis Henrici, quasi sub velamento sanctitatis, per suos cxsccrabiliter egit." * Richard of Hexham, 312. ' So Henry of Huntingdon, 221 6, tells us the tale, but in a form which sounds a little legendary. The message con:es, ** Rex Scottorum, simulans se pacifice venire ad te gratia hospitandi, veniens in Karloil et Novum Castellum dolose cepit utraque. Cui rex Stephanus, ' Quae dolose cepit, victoriosc rccipiam.*" 3 Henry of Huntingdon (2 21 6) says that his army was "quantum nullus in Angliz fuisse memorari potuit." This is not unlikely, as, thanks to King Henry's good peace, no great armies had been needed in England since Ro- bert's invasion at the beginning of his reign. * Compare Henry of Huntingdon with the two Hexham writers. * Sec John of Hexham, 265, and the Melrose Chronicle, 11 39. ' Mr. Robertson, t. 1 03, remarks that the Scottish King, still true to his cath. "refused to hold any fiefs of Stephen.** This would seem to come from Walter of Hemingburgh, i. 57 ; ** Rex Darid homo regis Stephani noa est efTectus, quia de laicis primus juravit fidelitatem ipse David filiae regis Henrici, scilicet nepti sus, de Anglia ei manutenenda post mortem reels Henrici." * See vol. iv. p. 89. GRANTS TO DAVID AND HIS SON 173 all, so it was now deemed that, though a woman could not in her person hold the temporal office next in rank, she might hand on a claim to it to her husband or her son. As the son of Matilda, Henry icceivcd the earldom of Huntingdon, which his father himself had held;* he did not receive his grandfather's other earldom of North- hampton, but, perhaps as a substitute, he received a grant of Doncaster, a place over which Earl Tostig, and therefore most likely Earl Waltheof, had held rights.' And it is said, though with less certainty, that he also received a promise that, if the King of the English should ever feel inclined to make a grant to any one of the Northumbrian earldom, he should first cause Ae claims of Earl Henry to be fully and fairly heard in his court.* In any case, the grant was actually made to him at a later time, and Henry became (1139) Earl of Northumberland in the narrower sense in which the word is now always used, the land between the Tweed and the Tyne.* In his other character of son of King David, he received the immediate possession of Carlisle and Cumber- land, and Bishop JEthelwolf had to transfer his temporal allegiance to a lord who united the blood of West-Saxon Kings and of Northum- brian Earls. King Stephen's new vassal presently went with his lord into England to take possession of the fiefs which he had just received within the kingdom. These grants are, from the point of view of the present volume, of far more importance than the endless wars and fightings of this time, more important even than the Battle of the Standard itself. They look back into the past, and they look onward into the future. Tlic earldom of Huntingdon was of no great moment ; lying, as it does, in the midst of the English kingdom, its lord would always be a mere Earl ; its possession could not raise any man into the rank of a prince. But Northumberland and Cumberland were fiefs of quite another kind. The grant of those earldoms to a Scottish King or to a- Scottish King's son practically amounted to cutting them off from tl^e kingdom of England It is the counterpart and the complement ot" the earlier grants of the elder Cumberland in the days of Eadmund the Magnificent and of Lothian in the days of Eadgar or of Cnut.' * On David^s possession of the earldoms convention! interfuisse testantur, promisit ^^f* Huntingdon and Northampton, see ill! quod, si comitatum Northanhymbriae Orderic, 702 C. The grant to Henry in alicui dare vellet, prius calumniam Henrici Richard of Hexham (513) is **dedit Rex filii regis Scotiae super eo juste in sua curia Uli cum consulatu patris sui, Huntadun, judicari faceret." The later course of the Carle], et Donacastram cum omnibus quae story quite bears out this statement. ad ea pertinent.** * The grant is recorded by Richard of ' Id Domesday (307 h) Tostig appears Hexham, 330 ; John of Hexham, 265. as haring a *• soca ** in Doncaster ; but he The elder writer adds that " pro ipsis op- wat not the only lord, as another " soca " pidis [Newcastle and Bamborough] quan- there belonged to Wulfsige and Archill. tum urbes eorum valebant in Suth-Anglia • Richard of Hexham (3 c 2) says this ilK dare dcbebat." doubtfully ; ^ Ut quidam aiunt qui se huic * See vol. i. pp. 4a, 84, 85, 388. 174 7/yA NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. In each case the Cumbrian grant comes first, and the Northumbrian grant follows it. Cumbrian geography is one of the most mysterious of subjects, and it may be discreet to abstaui from searching over narrowly into the exact relations between the territory which was now granted to Henry and the territory which had been in the old time granted to Malcolm. The later grant most likely took in a part only of the earlier. But at any rate the Cumberland of the tenth century and the Cumberland of the twelfth stood in the same relation to the dominions of the Scottish King on that side of the island. In both cases he advanced his south-western frontier, under the form of receiving a fief — we may apply the word even to the earlier case — at the hands of the English King. We may be quite sure that this ancient grant, and the long possession of an appanage in those regions by the heir-apparent to the Scottish Crown, were present to the mind of David when he made the investiture of his son with Carlisle and Cumberland one of the conditions of peace. With regard to Northumberland the case is still clearer. Here were no ancient claims to press or to mystify, but, as Scotland had got half Bernida by the elder cession, so she now got the rest by the later one. In the Cumbrian cession, old and new, the English King granted a recent conquest, one which in the earlier case was very recent indeed. In the Northumbrian cession, old and new, he lopped off an integral portion of the English kingdom. It is plain that the effects of these further grants, each lying geographically in advance of one of the elder grants, must have done much practically to incorporate the older . grants with the Scottish kingdom. As long as Cumberland and Northumberland were held by the King of Scots and his son, Lothian and the Scottish Strathclyde were no longer the border possessions of Scotiand towards England. The new fiefs stepped into the position which the elder fiefs had formerly held. Now that those elder fiefs had other lands in advance of them in the direction of England, men began to look on Lothian and Scottish Strathclyde as parts of the kingdom of Scotland,* while Northumberland and Cumberland took the place which had been held by Lothian and Scottish Strathclyde. The Scottish possession of Northumberland and Cumberland did not last long ; but it seems to have lasted long enough to help to bring about this result,^ a result the importance of which was shown when ' It reads almost like a protest when ^ We must also remember how moch John of Hexham (aSi), in describing the these lands gained during Stephen's time good works of David, speaks of •• coenobia by their connexion with Scotland. William Saltehou, Matiros, Neubothle, Holmcoltran, of Newburgh (i. a a) says pointedly, leddewerth* Crag, et luec quidam cis mare '* Aquilonalis regio, quae in potestatem Scotia [Scotswater] sita," and adds, " prse- David regis Scottorum usque ad flumen ter ea quse in Scoti& et in aliis locis bona Tesiam cesserat, per ejnsdem regis io* operatus est." dustriam in pace agcbat," HISTORICAL BEARING OF THE GRANTS. 175 the great controversy came on in the days of Edward the First. By that time it had been nearly forgotten on both sides that Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian had ancientiy stood in three distinct relations of dependence to the English Crown. The question was argued as one of the dependence or independence of the whole formed by those three.* This confusion cannot fail to have been strongly promoted by the fact that the King of Scots held, or claimed to hold, these new territories in advance of the old ones. The possession soon became a mere claim ; but, if it had been otherwise, if the Scottish Kings had kept their grasp on southern Bernicia and the diocese of Carlisle as firmly as they kept it on Lothian and northern Strathclyde, a de- scendant of the Anglian founders of Bamborough, nay, a descendant of the Saxons brought from the South to till the wasted lands of Cumber- land, would now be naturally spoken of as a Scot, just as we freely apply the Scottish name to an inhabitant of British Dunbarton or of English Haddington. I have grouped both the grants to Henry of Scotland together, because they form parts of one whole, with reference to events which happened long before and long after. But the grant of Cumberland and the grant of Northumberland were separated by a space of several years and by important events, by warfare in which the Scottish King was defeated in a great battle, but was successful in the war. A squabble about precedence at the English court led to an almost im- mediate breach of the good understanding between David and Stephen.^ And a not unnatural advantage was taken of it by the Scottish King to withdraw his son's homage. The next year ( 1 1 3 7 ) war was threatened ; bat a short truce was agreed on, and, as soon as the truce was ex- inred, David agam threatened war unless Northumberland was granted to his son.' When this was refused, that great invasion came which was marked by such pitiless havoc on the part of the Scots, by their first victory at Clitheroe,* and by theirgreat defeat near Northallerton in the Battle of the Standard (1138). Gathered around the consecrated standard, under the banners of the local saints, the banners not only of Saint Peter of York, but of the holy men of English blood, John of Beverley and Wilfrith of Ripon,* the men of northern England, ' See Historical Essays, i. 65. * The standard and the banners are de- ' Cf. the Chronicle, 1 1 35, with Richard scribed by Richard, 321; John, 262; of Hexham, 313, John, 258. The Mel- ^thek-ed, who ought to be more full, is rose Chronicler (1137) makes Archbishop less so. The name is recognised by the Thurstan obtain a respite. Chronicler in 1 1 38, who says that the ' Ridiard, 315; John, 259. Northern army "flemden pe king art te * John, 261. The battle is also re- Standard, and sloghen suithe micel of his ferred to by the Galloway men in ^thel- genge.** Cf. Hen. Hunt. 222 6; Cont red, 342. Flor. 1138. 176 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Stirred up by their Archbishop,' beat back the motley host of the in- vaders. The glory of victory fell to England, but its substaDtial gain fell to Scotland. When^ through Stephen's Queen Matilda^* peace was made in the year after the battle (i 139), all Northumberland, except the fortresses of Newcastle and Bannborough and the lands belonging to the churches of York and Durham^ were granted as an earldom » her cousin Henry ,^ Henry received the homage of the ceded lands, pledging to observe within his new dominions the laws of King Henry his uncle.* The names of the hostages who were given on the Scottish side are a good comment on the mixed population of ibe northern kingdom. The hostages were to be the sons of five earfs of Scotland. Two of them bear Celtic names which seem to ha« puzzled the English historian. Another was the son of an Eaji Fergus, but the other two seveAUy represent the Norman and the genuine English settlers in Scotland. One was the son of Hugh of Morville ; another w^as a son of the younger Earl Gospatric. This is perhaps his natural son Eadgar, who stands charged, with two other comrades of English descent, with sacrilegious incursions on the lan»€ still kept their horses; "Maxima P*r lord of all Gaul, received a second coronation in its most central city (August, 1 1 37). At the next Christmas feast, the King of what was really a new monarchy received his crown at Bourges, in the presence of a mighty gathering of his whole realm.' Thus, for one moment, as long as Lewis and Eleanor remained man and wife, the lands south of the Loire became, what they had never been before, what, save for one moment of treachery,^** they were never to be again for three ^ See above, p. 65. ^ The Chronicler (1137) gives the reason why the Normans acknowledged Stephen; "fortJi j^set hi uuenden [)act he sculde ben alsuic alse the eoni wxs, and for he hadde get his tresor ac he todeld it and scatered sotlice." Robert de Monte, ii35f **ys *h*^ E*""' Robert had carried off a good deal. See Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. 17; Cont. Flor. 1137; Ord. Vit. 909 A, B; Hen. Hnnt. 222 (cf. Robert de Monte, 1137); "Eustachius filius ejus homo regis Francorum effectus est de Normannia, qua Francorum adjacet im- perio." 3 Ord. Vit. 909 B, C, D. Robert de Monte, 1 137, gives some details. * For two years, according to Ordcric, 910 A. The time is three years in Robert de Monte, 11 37, accompanied by a yearly payment of two thousand marks. The Hexham writers agree with Orderic, bat mention the money, only Richard makes it paid by Geoffrey to Stephen. Oil thU truce see also Walter of Hemingburgh, i. 57. He speaks of Geoffrey's ''jus uxorium." * Ord. Vit. 909 A. He was " memor malorum, quz nuper in Normannia opera- tus est, pcenitentia motus." Cf. Chron. Mauriniacense, 391, where this niotiTc ii not enlarged on. • Ord. Vit. 895 D, 901 B; Suger, 319; Chron. Maurin. 379. ^ Ord. Vit. 909 A ; Chron. Maurin« 381. ■ Ord. Vit. 911 A. "Ludovicui poer Pictavis coronatus est." Cf. Suger, 321; Chron. Maurin. 38a. » Ord. Vit. 915 B. *<> I refer to the fraudulent dealings of Philip the Fair with Edward the First. MARRIAGE OF LEWIS AND ELEANOR. 185 hundred years, a part of the dominions of a King of Paris. For the first time, the tongue of oil bore rule over the tongue of oc ; the nation fonned by the infusion of the Frank upon the Celt bore rule over the nation formed by the infusion of the Goth upon the Iberian.* Bnt the South had not long to bear the unkindly yoke. Few however of those who beheld the bridal and the crowning of Lewis and Eleanor could have dreamed that, while Lewis still lived, another marriage of his bride should hand over the Aquitanian lands to the child who was to unite the claims of Stephen and Matilda. In the French Kings the great cities of the South would have found masters ; in the English Kings sprung of Eleanor's second marriage they found allies and protectors. With the will of William the Tenth the chain of events opens which leads on to the day when Simon of Montfort brought forth the seal of the city of Bourdeaux in answer to the calumnies of prelates and nobles,' to the day when the citizens of that noble city, wearied of their first taste of foreign conquest, cried once more for help to their Duke beyond the sea,' and when our own Talbot died as the champion of Aquitanian freedom against the ever advancing circle of Parisian bondage. The truce was made ; but Normandy was still not free from revolts, and the land was even brought so low as to have to endure the insult of a Breton invasion.* The truce itself was broken the next year,' and now we find Earl Robert in open alliance with the Count of Anjou.* The Earl had sent over to England a solemn defiance to the King, pleading that the oath which he had taken to him was a breach of the earlier oath which he had taken to his sister.^ Soon after this, the main interest of the story is transferred to England. While Stephen and Robert were waging war, each a captive to be exchanged * Orderic (911 A) says in a marked way, "Sic regnum Francorum ct Aqoi- tiDix dacatum. quern nullus patrum suorum balmit, nactus est." So in one of the many continuations of Sigebert, Pertz, vi. 459 ; " Regnum Franciae et ducatus Aqui- taniac copnlantur." ' See the letter of Adam Marsh to Robert Grosseteste in the Monumenta Franciscana, p. 132. ' There is something pathetic in the ay of the people of Bourdeaux at their first surrender in 1451 ; **A celle beure cnx de Bordeaux voyzns avoir faulte de Kcoors firent faire un hault cry par un ^rault, lequel crioyt secours de ceux ^^'Aogleterre pour ceux de Bordeaux auquel ay ne fat aucunement respondu ne donn^ »«owi." Monstrelet, iii. 36 B. Two years later the succour came under Talbot, and then was the end. * Ord. Vit. 911 C. The invader was from Dol, and we are told that the Nor- man knights drove him back, ** orto cla- more pauperis vulgi." » Ord. Vit. 916 B. • lb. C; Robert de Monte, 1 138. ' Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. i. 18. " Regi, more majorum, amicitiam et fidem inter- dixit, homagio etiam abdicato; rationem prxferens quam id juste fecerat, quia et rex illicite ad regnum aspiraverat, et omnem fidem sibi juratam neglexerat, ne dicam mentitus fuerat ; ipsemet quinetiam contra legem egisset, qui, post sacramentum quod sorori dederat, alteri cuilibet ea vivente, se manus dare non erubuisset.*' This is a good example of the feudal " diffidatio." i86 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, for the other, GeoflTrey was conquering Normandy bit by bit (1139- ii45y Again the Normans offered their duchy, and England too, to Theobald. 13 ut he declined the offer, and gave his interest to Geoffrey, stipulating only for the release of bis brother, and the ces^ sion of Tours to himself/' For six years the war went on. At last (i 144) Geoffrey enteccd Rouen in triumph,' and, having gained this crowning success, be in& joined in his further warfare by his allies the Count of Flanders anJ the King of the French. All Normandy was now his, save the cade of Arques, the seat of one of the Conqueror's early exploits, which held out till the next year {1 145), in the keeping of a vahant Flemisii monk, William by name.* Geoffrey was now the acknowledged Dutfi of the Normans, till^ five years later (1150), he resigned the Ehidij which he had conquered to his more famous son Henry-' We will now come back to our own island, and go as lightly as na^ be through these nineteen years of utter lawlessness* English wiitai speak of the first two years of Stephen as years of prosperity and com- parative peace;* and so they were. That is to say, there were onlf isolated revolts ; this and that castle was held against the King, brt there was not as )'et general desolation throughout the land. In tiic« separate struggles Stephen was for the most part successful, espedil^ in the siege and recovery of Kxeicr (1135), which was held against tii King by Baldwin of Redvers/ One incident in this siege is worth; ' His progress may be trMed year by year in Robert de Monle from n^S to 1 1 44, that is 1 145 of the irtie reckoning. Cf. Roger of Ho^vdct^. i. 210. ' This offer is not rctfrdtd by Robert, but it is mcntioinjd Vy Ordcric, 933 B^ C, being nearly the lad tvtnt which he re- cords. His form u [a is remarkable ; ** Htig[o Rothomagensis archiq^iscopui. atqne Nor- manni Tedbaldum comitcm jJierunt, eique regnum Angliae ct ducatum Normanniz obtulemnt." His refusal i* ihu* e^ pressed ; "Joffredo Henri ci rcj^ is geneio, intcrpoiitis quibusdam conditionibus, regium jus con- cessit." ' We hare now got past the guidance of Orderic and the pathetic end of his book. Our fact is recorded by Robert dc Monte, 1 144, and in the verses of the Draco, i. 218 et seqq. But the long warfare before the surrender of Rouen is summed up in one thunderbolt ; "Interea Gaufridus adest cen fulmen ab alto, Neustha concutitur fulgore tacta novo. ImprovUm enim, ceu vent! tnrbiDe &dA* Turbat eatn per ie» per sui, pet^ lUOf/* < Robert de Monte, 1143, 1144, T^ early stages of Geoffjey's Norman ciB- patgn are recorded by Wilttam of Maimer bury, Hist. Nov. ii. 70, and it U piihilf summed up bj our own Chronider* * Robert dc Monte^ 1150. "fttfl tuus reddiderat ei herediutcm mtm el parte matrix, sc^icet ducatam Normuus*** So Draco NormarrnTctiJ, i. 7:15; "Henricus dux efBcitur sudor t ^ .:'—'* * Hen. Hunt. 3 23. '* Hi ergo doc aou Stephano regi prospcrrimi fuerant. Ter^ tius vero mediocris et intercisus." ^ Chron, Petrib. 1135. This b^ of Exeter is recorded by aUl our authorities, except William of Malmesbarj and Or* deric. The fullest account is in the Gesta Stephani, 20-28. We here (34) pt acquainted with *' Aluredus, filius Jocfii cujusdam illustrissimi viri,** that is doubt- less Judhael of Totnes. Sec vol. iv. P« 115. It may be as well to mention that STEPHEN BEFORE EXETER. 187 When Stephen was inclined to refuse terms of capitulation els, the barons of his own party pleaded for them that they no oath of allegiance to the King, but had taken up arms scharge of their duty to their own lord.* This was pushing doctrine to its extreme point, to the point at which it upsets government A man's actions are to be guided by his spe- .tions to this or that man, rather than by that general duty mmonwealth, and to the King as its head, which comes special obligations. But that such a doctrine could be put it could even be pressed on a King by those who were m, shows how things had been changed by the accession of The doctrine now set forth under the walls of Exeter was political heresy which the last conqueror of Exeter had r the law that was passed upon the plain of Salisbury. The >y which Gaul and Germany were split asunder was one man would have dared to breathe in the ears either of the 3 was gone or of the Henry who was to come. On Stephen ot fear to press it as an acknowledged rule of law. Stephen's Us us how at this time he was striving, and not without some bring back some measure of peace and order in his kingdom.* 1 the other side tell us how he broke all the terms of his pecially his engagement to soften the harshness of the forest- re certain than either is the fact that he had to be constantly and fro to meet his enemies in one quarter of the country , besides having to march northward to meet the first Scot- jn and to win a moment of peace by the treaty of Durham.* lius, as we have seen, unable to cross into Normandy so IS called for by his interest beyond the sea.* His return is ^e been hastened by tidings of a conspiracy to slay all the in England and to make over the Crown to the King of ;7).* The story is very dark and uncertain, and no writer atofia** of the Gesta is not place in Deronshiie. See ephani, 37. "Addebant et regiam majestatero jur&sse, Sdelitateni domini sui arma 0 after the surrender we read " cnicumque domino vellent nisit." Stephen*s measures are op- >y those whom Henry had othing. See abore, p. 105. * Huntingdon (222) mentions each. Stephen went to hunt 1 in Huntingdonshire (see 7), "et ibi placiuvit dc forestis procemm suorum, id est de silvis et Tenationihus, et fregit TOtum et pactum Deo et popolo.** * See above, p. 172. * See above, p. 184. ' This story is found only in Orderic (911, 912), and the absence of all mention of it by any author writing in England tempts us to think that the story must be greatly confused and exaggerated. Still it must be the confusion or exaggeration of something which really happened. His words are, ** Reversus in Angliam turbatum regnum invenit, et fomentum nimiae cru- delitatis et craentse proditionis persensit. Nam quidam pestiferi conspiratiooem i88 THE NORMAN^ X/XGS f/iT ENGLAND. living in England, of any race or party, takes .any notice of it It of course been seized upon as a sign of the abiding hatred ^idi still reigned betineen the Norman anil the 01d-Eng;lish inbabit^ts "^ ^< outrages there recorded stand rather apart from the general story. * Chron. Petrib. 1 137. The castle- building comes out strongly in Hist. Nov. ii. 19, 34; "Castella erant crebra per totam Angliam; quaeque suas partes defendentia, imo, ut verius dicam, depopu- lantia." » lb. Mr. Earle (370) asks, **Was it His poor friends or His proud foes that said so ? " Henry of Huntingdon (125 6) will answer one way; "Quia igitur im- probi dicebant Deum dormire, excitatus est Deus." William of Newburgh (i. ii) will answer another way ; ** £0 [Gaufrido de Magna Villa] sic debacchante vide* batur dormire divinitas, et non curare res humanas, vel etiam suas, id est ecclesiastic cas : dicebaturque a laborantibus piis, * exsurge, quare obdormis, Domine.' " 190 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. blames the rich traitors who rose up against him ; but, in describing the actual horrors of the struggle, he makes no distinction between the party of the King and the party of the Empress. In fact, all thought of anything like political parties, all thought that the contending warriors strove for any cause or principle of any kind, seems to haw passed out of his mind. The picture which he gives us is not a pic- ture of ordinary war, not even of ordinary civil war ; it sets before ns a time of universal lawlessness, when every man who had the poiwr did all the mischief that he could do. The picture is not that of men waging war, even the worst forms of war, against the enemiei of their country or of their party. It is the picture of a time when every man who had the means to build himself a castle, made it tlK centre of general havoc, of spoil for the sake of spoil, it would sceo of torture for the sake of torture. Even under ^ur worst Kings in their worst moments, we have as yet heard only of mutilation as i punishment for real or supposed crimes. Torture, inflicted eitlicr to wring the goods of the sufferer from him or from a mere fiendish delight in suffering, has hitherto been laid to the charge only of Robert of Belesmc and of a few more who are branded as exceptioiiil evil-doers. But in this picture we hear little of slaughter, little of Ae mere general horrors of captivity and bonds. The subject on whidi the Chronicler is most eloquent is the variety of instruments for the infliction of suffering which were the creation of the cruel ingenuity of the devils and evil men with whom the castles were filled.* The other point is that, though we have now reached the age of chivalry, thou^ we ever and anon light on references to the maxims of chivalry, y«t the evil-doers of those days, the rich men who were traitors, the kwJs of the castles which our fathers so deeply loathed, had no regard for rank, sex, or calling. Truly might the Chronicler say of the vic- tims of these days, that never were no martyrs so pined as they were.* If the painter's art were to set forth in detail the varieties of torment which he describes, they would make a fit companion piece to the forms of martyrdom which are so grimly portrayed on the walls of Saint Stephen's on the Coelian Hill. I feel in no way called on to go into the details of these horrors, or to describe every revolt and every siege of these days of confusknu * The Chronicler gives many details. tinualor of Florence, 1 159; '*Vdiit a The famous " rachenteges," as the word is inferno emerserunt Neroniana sen f now written, are explained by Mr. Earle tempora et torments.'* Cf. also the as chains. Compare the accounts of the verses in Henry of Hantingdoo, 2x56; Oriental cruelties of Robert Fitz-Hubert in ** Detorquent unctos Domtni, sinml et Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 30, 36. His roulieres, blasphemy reminds us of William Rufus. Proh pudor, ut redimant, ezcnxiart ' Chron. PeUib. 1137. So the Con- student." HORRORS OF THE ANARCHY. 191 tie became a separate and independent centre of evil. Each ich a stronghold set himself up as king or tyrant ; besides is which spread over all the land within reach of his castle,* coined money, and administered what he called justice, in lame. It vdll be enough to point out a few of the most icidents, and to comment on any points which supply a poli- m. The second of the periods into which I have divided opens with the return of Matilda and the beginning of ; more like an intelligible civil war. But there is no doubt crisis was hastened by an act of imprudent violence on the ephen. A man of his character, mild, gentle, and merciful, ; mildness, gentleness, and mercy spring from impulse rather principle,* will often, in a fit of artificial energy, do deeds from nan of harsher temper, but greater prudence, would shrink. )ne too will be easily led to half measures, which only stir up d strengthen opposition, while he shrinks from those measures le severity which sometimes really answer their purpose, .t this time, by an act of this kind, contrived to increase the f his enemies among the class whose enmity was just then gerous. The King whose right to the Crown had been I by the Pope contrived to turn all ecclesiastical feeling im, and to make an enemy of the great prelate who was le Pope's Legate and his own brother. Bishop of Salisbury, has been often spoken of already as counsellor of King Henry. Two of his nephews — some that they were his sons — held two great bishopricks. Richard ;ld the see of Ely, and Alexander that of Lincoln.* An )n, whose mother, the Bishop's mistress or imacknowledged Wlliam of Newburgh (i. 22); aoque per singulas provincias m crebra sarrexerant, erantque quodammodo tot reges, vd ini, quot domini castelloniin, guli percossuram proprii numis- >testatein subditis, regio more, if.'* On the point of the hn of Hexham (278) says, regno magnum dispendium, enim ad adinventionis siue rapit monetx et numismatis Roger of Howden (i. 210) ( when he records the coming ory in 1 149 ; ** Fecit monetam m rocabant monetam dads; um ipse, sed omnes potentes, i quam comitet et ba rones, lant monetam. Sed ex quo dux iHe venit, plurimorum monetam cas- savit." ' Stephen's clemency was sometimes at least thought excessive. Roger of Wend- over (ii. 219) says that Stephen, "pravo usus consilio, non exercuit vindictam in proditores suos, unde postea restiterunt ei, et plurima contra eum caftra nequiter firmaverunt.** This is characteristically improved by Matthew Paris (Hist. Angl. i. 254) ; *' Rex, quorundam eifeminatorum et pusillanimium pravo usus consilio, debitam vindictam in captos suos non exercuit proditores, unde multa ei postea mala machinabantnr secundum illud pro- pheticum, Misereamur impio, et non discet facere justitiam." ' He sat from 1133 to 1 169. * See above, p* 144* igi THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, wife, plays a part in the story, was the King's Chancellor, and was known, in opposition doubtless to the great places held by his brothers or cousins, as Roger the Poor.' The Bishop of Salisbury himsdf and his episcopal nephews had given much offence and scandal by their overweening worldly pomp and by their special passion for builhen, who STEPHEN SEIZES THE BISHOPS, 193 casiles of the two Bishops, Salisbury, Sherborne, Malmesbury, Newark, and Sleaford, were given into the King's hands, and the Bishops, it is sarcastically said, were sent back to their duties in their dioceses.^ We may be sure that either Henry or his father would have found some other way of dealing with these dangerous prelates. It is plain that there was perfectly good groimd for bringing a legal charge against them, and either of those wise Kings would have known how to deal with them according to the forms of law. Stephen's illegal violence simply set men wondering how one who was so mild and soft and good should do such a thing ;^ and the imprisonment and harsh treatment of the Bishops lost him far more in the way of general good will, especially among the ecclesiastical order, than he gained in the way of strength by seizing the castles and their stores. What followed certainly could not have happened in any earlier reign. An ecclesiastical synod came together to sit in judgement on the King. Theobald, the third of the Primates whom the house of Bee gave to England,'* had lately succeeded William of Corbeil in the see of Canterbury;* but he had not succeeded him in his office of Legate, which letters from Pope Innocent had lately bestowed on the King's brother, Henry Bishop of Winchester.* The Bishops gathered at Winchester aroimd the Primate and the Legate. Henry was the first to set forth the crime of his brother, and to profess that the nearness of his kindred should in no way stay his hand from exe- cuting any sentence which the Primate and his brethren should de- cree against the guilty King. Stephen, it seems, was actually summoned before the synod (August 29), and he did appear, if not in person, yet by counsel. He sent certain Earls as his representatives, and with them Aubrey of Vere,* a man learned in the law, who set forth the crimes brings out most strongly the harsh cap- tivity of the Bishops. Roger was kept ** in bostario in locum przsaepio ; *' Alex- ander "sub vili tugurio." In the Gesta (50) we read, " Jussit ut, locis ab invicem scclusi inhonestis, acribus macerarentur jejuniis.** So Henry of Huntingdon, who adds that the Bishops were ** nihil justitix recusaotet et judicii aeqnitatem devotissime posceotes.'* According to William of Mafanesbury and the Continuator, Roger fasted three days as a freewill offering for his son, to move the heart of the Bishop of Ely to surrender. Cf. Maine, Early History of Institutions, 39. Orderic makes Matilda offer her own life for her son. * Ord. Vit. 930 B. "Episcopi cum pace in parochias suas rerersi sunt. * The Tewkesbury Annals, 1139, *>y of Roger, VOL. V. O most inaccurately, ** obiit in carcerc." * It is now that the Chronicler adds, " pa the suikes undergaeton )»art he milde man was and softe and god, and na iustise ne dide, W diden hi alle wunder.^ ' See vol. ii. p. 141. * The Chronicler places the death of William and succcfsioa of Theobald in 1 140, and his expressioa is remarkable; "te king maked* Teodbald acrcebishop )« was abbot in l>e Bee." (Mark that ••the beck" still keeps its article.) But Theobald was consecrated January 8, "39- » Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 23. * lb. 33. "Albcricus quidam de Ver, homo causarum varietatibus cxercitatus." His name often appears in Henry's Pipe Roll; he was killed in 1 1 41. See R. Howden, i. 205. 194 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. of the imprisoned Bishops, and drew much the same distinction as had been supplied by Lanfranc to the Conqueror in the famous case of Odo.* The Bishop of Salisbury made his answer. Archbishop Hugh of Rouen argued that the King might lawfuDy seize the Bishops' castles, because Bishops had no right to have castles, and because in such troubled times any loyal man ought to be glad to put his castk into the King's hands.' The Bishops threatened to accuse the King at Rome. Stephen answered by his counsel, that it should be the worse for any one who went on such an errand against the King's crown and dignity ; directly afterwards he gave up his own cause by saying he meant to appeal to the Pope himself.' In the end no formal censure seems to have been pronoimced ; but, according to one ac- count, Stephen submitted to some kind of p)enance.* Yet he steadOy refused to hearken to any entreaties to give back the castles and stcnes which he had seized.* Before the year was out (December 4, 1139), Bishop Roger of Salisbur}' was dead ; his death was conunonly be- lieved to have been hastened by the harshness of his treatment during his imprisonment.® Soon after Stephen had by this act lost the good will of a most im- portant class of his subjects, came the great crisis of his reign. Geoffrey of Anjou had already begun the process of swallowing Normandy, in Savoyard phrase, like an artichoke. His wife now (September 30, 1 139) risked herself in England. Earl Robert came over with his sister the Empress, and the second and most stirring stage of the war began. They landed at Portsmouth, and were first of all received by Matilda's step-mother, a step-mother perhaps younger than herself. King Henry's widow Adeliza, who now held the castle of Arundel with her second husband, William of Albini.'' Stephen was at that moment besieging IVIarlborough. He marched towards Arundel, but Robert was already ' Sec 7ol. iv. p. 464. « Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 26. "Certc, quia suspectum est lempus, se- cundum morem aliarum gentium, optimates omnes claves munitionum suarum debent voluQtati regis contradere, qui pro omnium pace debet militare." » lb. 27. * So cays the author of the Gesta, 51 ; "Ecclesiastic! rigoris duritiam humilitatis subjectione moliivit, habitumque regatem exutus, gemensque animo, ct contritus spiritu, conmii&si sententiara bumiliter sus- cepit." » Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 28. • So says William of Malmesbury (Hist. Nov. ii. 32) expressly, and as mncb is implied when the Continuator of Flo- rence says that be was **praB dolore ct tristitia iafirmatus," and Henry of Hunting- don that he was '* tarn mcerore qoam scoio confectus.*' ^ Will. Malms. Hist Nov. ii. 29; Ord. Vit. 9J0 B; Hen. Hunt. 223; ConLFlor. Wig. 1 1 29. None of these writers men- tion Matilda's second husband. But he appears in Robert de Monte, 2139: " Invitaverat enim eos Willermus de Albuk> neio, qui duxerat Eliz quondam reginam, quz babebat castellum et comiutum Harundel, quod rex Henricus dederat et in dote." LANDING OF THE EMPRESS. 195 on the road for his own castle at Bristol.* Stephen, with the ill- timed generosity which marked his character, allowed the Empress to join her brother, even giving her an escort under the command of his brother the Bishop of Winchester, whose loyalty, since the wrong done to his episcopal brethren, was beginning to be doubtful.' A crowd of enemies now arose against Stephen. The Earl of Gloucester, in his character of son-in-law and heir of the conqueror of Glamorgan, was joined by ten thousand Welshmen, and a cry of lamentation goes up, even from distant Saint Evroul, to tell us how all England, and especially its holy places, were laid waste by the barbarians.^ A crowd of revolts, a crowd of sieges and marches, follow. One castle is taken after another, and we now not uncommonly hear, what we have seldom heard of in earlier wars, what we have never heard of either in native English warfare or in the warfare of the Conqueror, of the hanging of their defenders.* Among the chief revolters of this time was Miles, Constable of Gloucester, presently to be raised to the earldom of Hereford at the bidding of the Empress, and before long to die the death of William Rufus.*^ Another rebel of great fame was Brian the son of Count Alan, commonly known as Brian Fitz-Count, who had shared with Earl Robert the duty of taking Matilda herself over the sea for her second marriage.* The Bishop of Ely not unnaturally rose, though, according to one version, against him Stephen was the first aggressor.^ William the son of Richard, who held Corn- ' Earl Robert's workf at Bristol are song by his namesake, ii. 433, ed. Heame ; **Aiid he brozt in gret sU ]« toon, as he zut ys. And rerde )>er an castel myd ^ noble tour, At of alle )>e tours of Engelood ys yholde flour.** • The fullest account is in William of Malmesbury and the Oesta, but there are tome special details in Robert de Monte. On tbe safe^onduct given to Matilda William of Malmesbury (ii. 29) observes, ** Quern cuilibet, quamvis infestissimo ini- mico, negare laudabilium militum mos non est." But Orderic says (920 B), ** In hac nimirum permissione magna regis timplicitas sive socordia notari potest: et ipse a prudentibus, quod suz sahitis regniqne sui securiutis immemor fuerit, lugendus est.** He goes on to moralize at some length on the relations between sheep and wolves. So John of Hexham (366) says that it was done *' ex indiscreU animi simplicitate.** It is always worth while to mark common sense protesting against the follies of chivalry. The author of the Gesta. attributes the indiscretion to the advice of Bishop Henry, whose loyalty he already questions. Henry of Hunting- don simply says, **vel perHda credens consilia, vel quia castrum videbat in- expugnabile.'* • Ord. Vit. 920 C. •• Decern millia ut fertur, barbari per Angliam diflfusi sunt." He goes on to tell of the mischief that was done **Britonum giadiis." The Shropshire man remembered the neigh- bours of his childhood. * We can hardly blame any one who hanged Robert Fitz-Hubert. See the Con- thiuator, Il40,*and Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 36. But under Eadward he would most likely have been only banished, under William kept in bonds for life, and under Henry deprived of his eyes. * See the story of the death of Miles in the Gesta, 10 1. • See above, p. 1^5. ^ In the Gesta, 03, the Bishop is made to revolt to revenge the injuries of his uncle, but Henry of Huntingdon, 223 6, jg6 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. wall under the King, received into his castles Reginald of Dunstan- ville, one of the natural sons of King Henry, who, like the rest, was zealous in the cause of his sister.^ And the interest of his name and descent, though his exploits are not remarkable, leads us to add to our list John of Sudeley, another son of Harold of Ewias, one of a house which could boast by the spindle-side of the blood of the ancient Kings.^ In this way the whole land was ravaged, castles and towns were taken and burned, chiefly in the South and West,' till the seat of war begins to change to another part of En^od. Earl Robert struck a great blow by the capture and burning of Not- tingham (September 8, 1140),^ and this brings us to the most striking incident in this whole time, to the only military action in this endless scene of sieges and skirmishes which deserves the name of a battle. Early in the year after Matilda's landing an attempt had been made to make peace. At Pentecost (May 26, 1140) the King held, or tried to hold, the usual festival in London ; but this time his court was held to the east and not to the west of the city, not in the ball of Rufus, but in the fortress of his father. And it is noted that, among all the Bishops of his dominions on both sides of the sea, one onlj, John Bishop of Seez, deigned to answer to his summons.^ Such a state of things perhaps brought his desolate condition home to Ste- phen's mind ; an attempt was made to make peace. Commissioners on both sides met at Bath. Each of the rivals was represented by a brother, but Earl Robert was a more trustworthy representative of the Empress than the Legate Henry was of the King. But Stephen was represented also by the new Archbishop Theobald, and by his own Queen Matilda, who appears throughout as a vigorous defender of the rights of her husband, just as the Countess Mabel showed herself on the other side. But no agreement was come to. We are told that the party of the Empress were ready to submit her claims to an ecclesiastical sentence, which the party of the King naturally refused* Stephen had stooped to receive a papal confirmation of his right ; be was not going to stoop yet further — at least his wife was not likely to stoop in his name — and to give the venal court of Rome a chance of withdrawing the confirmation which it had once given. But presently the Legate Henry crossed the sea ; he had conferences with the King of the French and with his own brother Count Theobald (September- makes Stq>hen drive Richard out of his Continuator, and Hist. Nov. it. 29-36. see, ** quia nepos prsedicti episcopi Sales- * The fullest account of the taking of buriensis erat, e quo odii incentivum in Nottingham is also given by the Coo* progeniani ejus duxcrat." tinuator. ^ Gesta. 65. » Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 37. ' Cont. Flor. Wig. 1 1 39. See above, "Caeteri vel fastidienmt vei tunoeranl p. 181. venire." ' See the years 1I39» 11 40 in the ^ lb. Matilda was *^ ad bonom pronior.' LINCOLN SEIZED BY THE EARLS. 197 November, 11 40), and came back with further proposals of peace. Theobald was the brother of the King as well as of the Legate, and Lewis had lately formed a family connexion with Stephen by betrothing his sister Constance to Stephen's son Eustace.^ But the mediations of these foreign friends must have been exercised on behalf of Matilda rather than of Stephen. For her party and the panegyrist of her brother deemed them for the good of the land, while Stephen did not.* The negotiations failed, and war went on. In the last month of the same year (December, 1 1 40) the King was in the city, or at least in the shire of Lincoln,' where the citizens, not greatly heeding, it would seem, his treatment of their Bishop, were zealous in his cause. But men of higher rank were less to be trusted. Stephen left in the city two Earls, brothers on the mother's side, being sons of the Countess Lucy by her two marriages.* These were William of Roumare, Earl of the city, and Randolf of Chester, whom the King trusted, but who, it seems, still owed him a grudge because not he but Henry of Scotland held the earldom of Cumber- land.^ The brother Earls rebelled. By a stratagem they seized the casde on the hill, the fellow of the minster where Alexander was re- touching the work of Remigius, and the loyal citizens, the descend- ants of the men who had left the height when the castle and the minster were reared,' saw the banner of rebellion floating above their heads. In the plot by which the castle was taken the wives of the two Earls took a chief part ; it was the law of this reign that, while all else were faithless, wives at least bore true allegiance to their husbands.' The Countess of Chester moreover was bound to the side of the Em- press by another tie, as being a daughter of Earl Robert of Gloucester.® The citizens and their Bishop, the latter returning good for evil, sent word to the King, and prayed for help.* Stephen came (Christmas, * Henry of Huntingdon, 223, says mali- ciously, " Acdpiens thesauros episcopi, comparavit inde Constantiam sororem Lodovici regis Fraoconim ad opus EuAatii filii sui.^* « Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. ii. 37. ** Salobria patrix mandata referens si esset qui Terba factis apponeret. £t plane im- peratriz et comes confestim consensete; rex vero de die in diem producere, pos- tremo in summa frustravi.*' » lb. iii. 38. * See vol. ii. pp. 445, 446. But I have spoken of her more at large in Appendix PP. of the second edition of my third volome. » The account of the Earl's motives in the Chronicle is not very clear; ** per- efter wax suythe micel uuerre betuyx \t king and Randolf eorl of Caestre, noht for))i |>«t he ne iaf al Jxet he cuthe axcn him, alse he dide alle othre, oc aefre )>e mare he iaf heom )>e waerse hi waeron him." • Sec vol. iv. p. 145. ' The story is told in full by Orderic, 921 B. • Will. Malms. Hist. Nov. iii, 38 ; Ord. Vit. 921 C. • The loyalty of the citizens comes out strongly in Hist. Nov. iii. 38, and in the Gesta, 90, as it afterwards does in the battle. Orderic alone mentions the Bishop. But the panegyrist of Robert says with a kind of a sneer, " Burgenses Lindocolinae civitatis, qui vellent apud regem grand cm locare amicttiam.*' 1 98 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. 1140-1141), with the energy which he could show when the actnal moment of action came ; writers on the other side strangely blame him because he came without sending a formal defiance, a fonnal renunciation of friendship, to the traitors who had certainly stood on no such terms of ceremony towards him.' He occupied the d^, and he seems to have fortified the mmster as a means of attacking^ the neighbouring castle.^ The rebel Earb with their Countesses were straitly besieged in the castle ; but Randolf contrived to escape from a tower and made his way to ask his father-in-law for help.^ Earl Robert gathered his host, bringing with him, like Mercian Earls in past times, a large band of Welsh under the command of two brothers, Meredydd and Cadwalader.* The army drew near, and portents troubled the mind of Stephen's followers as the King heard the mass of the Bishop whom he had so lately kept in such harsh bondage." The elders on tlie King's side prayed him to wait for fresh troops;' bnt he chose rather to listen to the counsels of the Earls who sur- rounded him, but who in their hearts were traitors.* We have a vivid picture of the battle, and a no less vivid repwt of the real or imaginaiy speeches with which the leaders on each side stirred up their men to battle. Such speeches are commonly the work of the historian ^"bo records them, but, when they are the work of a contemporary his- torian, they are worth as much as any other witness to the feelings of the time. We may therefore listen to the voice, whether it be that of the Earl of Gloucester or of the Archdeacon of Hunting- don,^ which lets us into several of the secrets and scandals of the age. The Earl, we are told, bade his host be of good courage. They were going to fight against a perjured King, who had seized the Crown in despite of the oath which he had sworn, a King whose usurpation had been the cause of death to many, and of all the troubles of the land. Those who were there to fight against him were the men whom he had deprived of the lands which they had that day come to recover.** Who was there to fight against them * Hist. Nov. iii. 38. *' Iniqnum id visum multis, quia (sicut dixi) nulla suspicione rancoris ab cis ante festum abscesserat, nee mode more majornm amicitiam suani eis interdixerat, quod dtffidiare dicunt." Sec above, p. 185. He leaves out the fact, which makes some difference, that the Earls had treacherously seized the castle. '^ So it is implied in the workings of Earl Robert's mind, as set forth in Hist. Nov. iii. 39, where the causes of the Earl's coming to Lincoln are said to be " Quia rex generum suum nuUis ejus culpis injuriaverat, filiam obsidebat, ecclesiam beat!k Dei genitricis de LindocoKno ia- castellaverat. ■ Cf. Hist. Nov. iii. 38, with Old. Mt 921 C, and John of Hexham, 269. * The names come from Ordcric, 982 A. They led a "vesana Gualorum a- terva." * See the legend in Henry of Hunting- don, 224, and the Gesta, 70. * See John of Hexham, 269. CL Orderic, 921 D. ^ The speeches on both sides come from Henry of Huntingdon, 223 6, 224 h. ' **Rex . . . exemplo sui nihil juris habentibus terras distribuit jure possidentt- BATTLE OF LINCOLN, 199 in the host of the perjurer? The citizens of Lincoln, who would soon run back to their houses, while they, having crossed rivers and marshes, had no means of retreat. Who were the leaders of the enemy? There was the cruel Count Alan of Britanny, the foe of God and man.^ There was the Count of Meulan, the crafty, the deceitfiil, the proud boaster, mighty in words, but weak in deeds, the last to reach the field of batde and the first to turn away from it. There was another Earl, Hugh the Bigod, who, to the perjury which he shared with all of them, had added the special lie by which he had said that King Henry had changed his purpose on his death- bed.* There was Earl William of Albemarle, a man who abode firm in the practice of all wickedness, one whose life was such that his own wife had left him to seek shelter with another man.' And there was another Earl, whose name is passed by rather by the Arch- deacon of Huntingdon than by the Earl of Gloucester; the man who had robbed his guilty comrade of his wife, a man vigorous in the ser\'ice of Bacchus, but unknown in that of Mars.* There was Simon Earl of Northampton, a man in whom we may claim a share as in one sprung from the blood of the martyred Waltheof, but who appears in his enemy's invective as a man whose words were his only deeds, whose promises were his only gifts.* The rest were like unto them, men such as their King, robbers, manslayers, every one of them stained with the guilt of perjury. But those who fought around him were the men whom the great King Henry had set up, whom the usurper Stephen had cast down, who were going forth to execute the just judgement of God upon the guilty men who stood before them.* We may perhaps be less inclined to believe in this extreme wickedness of all the nobles who surrounded Stephen, when we bus diripuit, ab ipsis neqnitor dehaereditatis . . . prius aggrediendus est." The "ex- haeredati " play a large part both in Henry's narrative and in that of Orderic. They formed a separate division of the EarFs army. * The character of special cruelty given to Alan is borne out by the author of the Gesta, who calls him (65) *'rir summz crudeliutis et doli." * See above, p. 167, and Appendix DD. ' In the Annals of his own monastery (Chronica de Melsa, i. 90, 212) Earl William appears as a man of admirable piety, and there is not a word of scandal against his wife Cecily, the daughter of William the ion of Duncan, the son of King Malcolm of Scotland. Anyhow he was at the Battle of the Standard. * •* Procedit contra vos, consul ille qui coniiuli praedicto iponsam abripuit, adulter patentissimus et excellenter impurus, Bac- chi devotus, Marti ignotus, vino redolens, bello insolens.'* This Earl, who leems to have been too disreputable to be named, is by Professor Stubbi (R. Howden, i. 2or) supposed to be the Earl of Warren. Robert of Gloucester (ii. 454) seems to leave him out. * Henry himselC in recording Simon^s death in 1153* sa3rs in his own person (227 6) that he was "plenus omnium quae non licebant, omnium quse non decebant." * ** Vos igitur viri fortissimi, quos mag- nu$ Henricus rex erexit, istc dejecit, ille instruxit, iste dettruxit.*' 200 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. hear i^hat was said on Stephen's side against Earl Robert himsdf. And the event shows that the greatest fault of Stephen's foUoireis was lack of zeal and good faith on behalf of Stephen himselL The King, it seems, with all his popular talents, was no orator:^ the speech on his side was made bj Baldwin the son of Gilbert of the house of Clare. In his eyes the righteousness of Stephen's cause was as clear as his unrighteousness was in the eyes of Earl Robert They had on their side three advantages, the justice of their cause, their greater numbers, their superiority in \-alour. Tbc charge of perjur}- was returned. They were fighting for their King, the Lord's anointed, to whom their enemies had taken oaths and broken them. What the chief of the enemy, Earl Robert himself, was they all knew. His threats were great, but his deeds were small; his famous eloquence never led to action ; a lion in speech, he was in heart no better than a hare.^ These charges soimd strange when brought against Robert of Gloucester; but they show perhaps the natural feeling of the mere soldier against the man who was both soldier and scholar, the feeling which made the warlike bat un- lettered Volumnius throw out his taunts at the peaceful works of hb colleague Appius.^ Randolf of Chester is at least not charged with mere cowardice; he is fierce enough in beginning warfare or any- thing else, reckless of danger, seeking things beyond his power, bit carrnng nothing to perfection ; beginning his plans with the strength of a man, but lea\'ing them, when begun, with the weakness of a woman. As for the Welsh, rash, unarmed, unskilled in war, they were no better than beasts running of their own accord upon the hunting-spear.* As for the rest, be they nobles or knights, runaways or vagabonds of any kind,* all that was to be wished was that there were more of them to triumph over. The accoimts of the batde vary greatly, but one thing is plain, that Stephen was basely forsaken by many both of his own subjects and of his foreign mercenaries. Among these the names of the Count of Meulan and of the Fleming William of Ypres are specially branded* But a small band of faithful men still stood round their King ; and our ' *' Tunc quia rex Stephanus festiva voce a cuirass as another man with« and Alan ct cartbat.*' Is tbc hexameter intentional ? Percy, in -^ithclrcd, 342. • "Robtrti duces vires not« sunt * "Tam proceres quam milites, tians- Ipse quidem de more multum minatur, fugz et girovagi." panim opcratur, ore leoninus, corde lepo- * The flight of William of Ypres corae* rinu» clarus einqnentia, obscurus inertia." out in most of the accounts, but Henry 01 ' Livy, X. 19. Huntingdon, who calls him *' rir exconsu- ♦ " Qui inermcm bcllo prjeferunt tenieri- laris et magnz probitatis,** makes him tatcm. et arte et usu belli carentes quasi put the Welsh to flight before he files [tcora dccurrunt in venabula." Com- himself; but according to Ordehc, be pare the dispute between Malise Earl of and his Flemings and AUn and hb Bretnm Strathem, who was as ready to go without were the first to fly. STEPHEN TAKEN PRISONER. 20I thoughts are carried back to another fight and to a nobler leader, when we read how the King of the Engfish, fighting on foot like an Englishman, wielded the sword of ^thelstan or Eadmund till it broke in his hand, how a young citizen of Lincoln brought him in its stead the weapon of Cnut and Harold, and how Stephen, with his Danish axe, laid manfully about him, till its stroke, lighting on the helmet of the Earl of Chester, brought the traitor to his knee.* But on that day treason had the upper hand ; the King's followers had fled, and three men only were at his side." The soldiers of Earl Robert pressed around him, and a mighty stone, hurled as by the hand of the Homeric Aias,' brought the King himself to the ground.* A knight called William of Kains seized, like Menelaos,*^ the fallen King by the helmet, and with a loud voice cried out that he held the King, and bade all hi^ comrades hasten to secure the richest prize of victory.' Stephen could now do nothing but give himself up as a prisoner to the Earl of Gloucester. With him was taken, fighting to the last, Baldwin who had made the speech before the battle, and who at least could not be charged with belying his words by his deeds, and Richard the son of Urse, a descendant, it would seem, of the old enemy Urse of Abetot, whose exploits that day might be taken as some atonement for the crimes of his kindred.^ A few valiant men still fought on to be all slain or taken prisoners.® The city was sacked, and its inhabitants slaughtered without mercy, by the savage followers of Earl Randolf.' * The personal valour of Stephen comes out in every account, but especially in Henry of Huntingdon, Orderic, and John of Hexham. Henry arms him first with the axe ; " Tunr apparuit vis regis fulminea [this is a lightning flash from Assundun. see vol. i. p. 238], bipenni maxima caedens hos, mens illos." The axe is broken, then he fights with his sword, ** gladio dextera regis digno " — ahnost the words which he uses of Eadmund — till the sword too is broken. But one can hardly donbt that John of Hexham (269) is right in making him wield the sword first; ** Dissecuit omnes ad congressum sese opponentes donee commiiiueretur gladius in manibus ejus, posuit vero in manu ejus secorim Danicam quidam civis Lincolniz." So Orderic, 922 B; "Ense vel securi Norica quam quidam iUi juvenis ibi ad- ministraverat pugnare non cessavit." The personal combat with Earl Randolf ap- pears in Henry's account, but comes out more clearly in John of Hexham. * Orderic is specially emphatic on the treason of Stephen^s followers. It is he who speaks of the "tres pugiles" who were still with the King when he was taken. The Chronicler, in his short and pithy account, is of the same mind. * Iliad, vii. a68. * Hist. Nov. iii. 40. » Iliad, iii. 345. * The name comes from Henry of Huntingdon; **Imiit in regem, et eum galea arripiens voce magna clamavit. Hue omnes, hue, regem teneo. Advolant omnes, et capitur rex.** ^ Henry of Huntingdon and Orderic both preserve the name of Baldwin. Henry adds that of Richard. See vol. iv. P- "S- * Hen. Hunt. 224 6. "Adhuc capto rege pugnabat acies regalis ; nee enim circumventi fugere poterant, donee omnes vel capti vel cxsi sunt." * Henry of Huntingdon simply says, " Ci vitas hostili lege direpta est." Orderic gives some details, especially of the drowning of five hundred "nobiles cives" 202 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. The great Danish city was ihus dealt with as no city had been dealt with in the days of the Conqueror ; but it fared no worse than many cities fared in the more polished days of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Stephen was first led into Lincoln to see the desolation of the faithful city ; ^ and it would seem that, in full agree- ment with chivalrous notions, some who had felt no compassion during the horrors of the sack were moved to pity and repentance by the misfortunes of the captive King.' He was presently led by the victorious Earl of Gloucester to the Empress, who was then in his own city, and was then kept in ward in the castle of Bristol.' All England now submitted to the Empress, save Kent alone, where Queen Matilda and William of Ypres, who had, it seems, recovered himself from his flight at Lincoln, still kept men in their allegiance.* Castle after castle, district after district, was won for Earl Robert and his sister.'^ The fate of one fortress awakens a special interest, as giving us a glimpse of a class of men of whom in tiiese times we seldom hear except as victims for the torturer. A Breton Count Hervey had married a daughter of the King, and now he commanded in that great fortress of the Devizes which Stephen had wrested from Bishop Roger. He was overthrown, not by knights or nobles or mercenaries of whatever nation, but by the folk of the land. The churls of the surrounding country, stirred up no doubt by some excess of cruelty, swore his destruction as one man. They besi^ed him in the castle, which was afterwards surrendered to the Empress, and he left England full of shame.* It is not clear whether the vic- torious churls, thinking, as usual, that any change of masters must be for the better, surrendered their prize to those who now had the upper hand, or whether Hervey himself chose to call in the opposite party in the general struggle rather than to abide his fate at the hands who tried to escape by the river. William of Malmcsbury confirms the fact, and moreover approves; "Vulgus veto bur- gensium Ltndocolinorum multa parte ob- truacatum est, justa ira illorum qui vicis- sent, nullo dolore illorum qui victi essent, quod ipsi principium et fomes istius mali fiiissent." ^ Hen. Hunt. 224 6. "Rex in eam miserabiiiter introductus est." * The writer of the Gesta (71, 7a) describes the workings of their minds, which went so far " ut non solum in lacrimas et ejulatum omnes prorumperent, sed et cordis, et oris poenitudine quam maxime aificerentur." ' Gesta, 72 ; Hist. Nov. iii. 41, where we may remark the phrase that the King was presented to the Empress, "juxU morem iliius generis hominura quos cap- tivos nominant." Ord. Vit. 922 B; Cont. Flor. Wig. 114T ; John of Hexham, 269; Will. Neub. i. 8; Hen. Hunt. 225. The Chronicler says, ** and Ixd him to Bristowe and diden )»r in prisun and . . . teres." One would like to fill up the gap, whidi suggests sonje form of the word fttten. * Hen, Hunt. 225. So the Gesta, 73. * See the Gesta, 73, 74, and for places in the north, John of Hexham, 269. * Gesta, 74. "Comes Henreui, gener regis, in castello quod Divisa dicitnr a simplici rusticorum plebe in unom se globum in malum illius conjnrante dio- tissime obsessus, tandemque castello in manus comitissx reddito, ab omni Angli& inhoneste depulsus, cum paucis trans- meavit." ELECTION OF MATILDA, 203 of his immediate local enemies. In either case it is something to see a stranger, a Count, a King's son-in-law, driven to such straits as these by the unaided eflforts of the people of an English shire. Matilda was thus in actual possession of by far the greater part of England, while Stephen was in bonds. The next object was to give something like a legal confirmation to her possession. To this end the Legate Henry was won over. We have seen that he was already ill-disposed to his brother on account of the seizure of the Bishops, and a promise to be guided by his counsels in all weighty matters, especially in the disposal of bishopricks and abbeys, gained him to the side of the Empress (February 16, 1141).^ And now followed a scene which has no parallel in English history. If Matilda was to reign, her reign needed to begin by something which might pass for an election and coronation. But her followers, Bishop Henry at theif head, seem to have shrunk from the actual crowning and anointing, ceremonies which — unless Sexburh had, ages before, received the full royal consecration — had never, either in England or in Gaul, been applied to a female ruler." Matilda was solemnly received in the cathedral church of Winchester (March 3, 1141); she was led by two Bishops,' the Legate himself and Bernard of Saint David's, as though to receive the crown and the unction, but no crowning and no unction is sj)oken of* An ecclesiastical synod followed (April 7), which was also held at Winchester. Archbishop Theobald was there, and some other prelates, who, together with some laymen, had, it is especially remarked, asked Stephen's leave before they bent to the times and plighted their allegiance to the Empress.' In the pro- ceedings of this synod, as reported by an eye-witness, we have a clear setting forth of the arguments on one side of the question. We have also a speaking proof of the way in which ecclesiastical pre- tensions had grown during the utter break-up of all civil society. The president and the presiding spirit of the assembly was the Legate Henry. His speech began and ended with a panegyric on his uncle the late King, and on the happiness which England had enjoyed during his peaceful reign.* He set forth the rights of Matilda, grounded on the oath taken to her in her father's lifetime. ' Hist. Not. iii. 42. says, ** Dator ejus dominio corona regni • I cannot answer for Urraca Queen Angliac," and when ihc author of the of Castile, who reigned from 1 109 to Gesta (75) speaks of "regis castello, et 1 1 26. fcgni corona quam semper ardentissime ' See Tol. iii. pp. 28, 373, 418. affectarat, .... in deliberationem tuam * William of Malmesbury (Hist. Nov. contraditis,** and adds that Henry ** domi- iii. 42) seems distinctly to exclude a nam et reginam acclamare praecepit.'* coronation; he merely says, " Honorifica The Waverley Annalist, 114I, ventures facta processione, recepta est in ecclesia to say, '* Corona regni est ei tradita." episcopatus Wintoniae." We must there- * Hist. Nov. u. s. fore see only rhetoric when the Continnator ' lb. 44. 204 THE NORAfAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. It was only because she delayed to come over to England and take possession of her kingdom that Stephen, that there might be some one to keep the peace of the land, had been allowed to reign.* He had been accepted on the strength of promises to defend the Chiirch and preserve the peace, all which promises he had broken. To them, to the clergy of England, it chiefly belonged to elect as well as to con- secrate Kings.* He therefore called on the synod to elect the daughter of Henry, the great and incomparable King, as Lady of England and Normandy.' Whether any consecration was designed to follow, whether at such consecration she would have been promc^ to the specially royal title, we are not told. Countess, Queen, and Empress in other lands, in England the only title that she bears is Lady. The daughter of Henry reigned, so far as she reigned at all, by the same style as the daughter of JElfred. In the ecclesiastical assembly all agreed to the Legate's proposal ; at least none raised a voice against it.* But, if Henry, whether as Legate or as Bishop of Winchester, deemed it good to put forward the clerg)' as especial electors of Kings, he had lived long enough in England to know that there was at least one other body of men who claimed to have a voice in such matters. The men of London had chosen Stephen to be their King; and, without their consent, his Crown could not be transferred to another. The men of London, for the greatness of their city, ranked with the barons of the realm, and many barons of the realm had been admitted to the franchise of their commonalty.* While the Council was still sitting, a deputation came from the commonalty of London, not to make any arrangement with regard to the Crown, but to pray that their lord the King might be set free from his bonds.* A clerk of the Queen put in a vigorous pro- test on behalf of her husband, claiming for him, not only freedom,but the kingdom which wicked men had taken from him."' The London de- putation went back, promising to do their best on behalf of the Empress ; but meanwhile Matilda disgusted even her own partisans by her extreme haughtiness, a haughtiness which she showed even to ' Hist. Nov. iii. 44. " lb. "Clcrus Angliae, ad cujus jus potissimum spectat principem cligcrc, si- mulque ordinare.'* ' lb. "Filiam pacific! regis, gloriosi regis, diritis regis, boni regis, et nostro tempore incomparabilis, in Angliae Nor- manniseque dominam eiigimus, et ei fidem et manutcnementum promittimus.^' In her grant of the earldom of Hereford to Miles of Gloucester (Rymer, i. 14) her style is *' Matilda Imperatrix, Henrici regis filia, et Anglorum doniina." * Hist. Nov. iii. 45. * lb. ** Londonienses, qui snnt quasi optimates, pro magnitudine civitatis, in Anglia." " Omnes barones, qui in coram communionem jamdudum recepti fuenmt.'* " Londonienses, qui pri^rcipui habebantur in Anglia, sicut proceres." * lb. "Missi a communione quim vocant Londoniarum, non certamina sed preces ofierre, ut dominus suas rex de cap- tione liberaretur." On the *• communio ** see vol. iv. pp. 373. 374. ^ Hist. Nov. iii. 47. MATILDA 2N LONDON, 205 )m she owed most, to the Legate, to her own brother and arl Robert, to her uncle King David, who had come to 1 who had been acting on her behalf on the road* She ler w^ay to London by a roundabout path. She was re- :ford by the younger Robert of Oily,* and in his casde she mpion in his stepson, another of her half-brothers, Robert Eadgyth.' At Saint Alban's a deputation from London ther deputation from London had once come to Berkhamp- ng to receive her into the city.* She took up her abode iter (June, 1141), and again displayed the same haughti- 3re. Again she refused to listen to the prayers of her le Queen, to the prayers of the nobles of her own side, for the release of Stephen. She would not hearken even »sal that he should resign the kingdom and spend the rest as a monk or pilgrim.' She offended Bishop Henry by petition that at least his nephew Eustace might receive his inental possessions.^ And, more than all, she drew on iU will of the men of the great city whose citizens could imake Kings. The men of London prayed of her that bserve the laws of King Eadward, because they were the not the laws of her father Henry, because they were ) be borne.' The words are remarkable in many ways. \ only expression of discontent with the general rule of 5 is traced by John of On her behaviour to the , and the Bishop, see the tta, 74, 81, and the Con- Cf. vol. iv. pp. 30, 499. filius Edae et Henrici regis inctly mentioned by John 'O. I have to thank Mr. or calling my attention to nents in the MonasUcon ich Henry of Oily, the son Eadgyth, appears as the •bertus Henrici regis filius," I whom we are now dealing. . 500. Heralds seem to Robert with the Earl of p. 366. omes from the Continuator, eunt eam ibi cives multi ex atari ibi sermo multimodus itote." So the Gesta, 76, London iensium, qui se ilU rant, ad civitatem postremo « Cont. Flor. Wig. 1 14 1. The writer here distinctly opposes the Queen and the Lady, ** interpeUavit dominam Anglorum reginam." ^ Cf. Hist. Nov. iii. 49 ; John of Hex- ham, 270. • All our authorities speak generally of Matilda's haughtiness to the citizens, but it is only in the Continuator of Florence that we find the distinct demand and refusal of the laws of Eadward ; " Inter- pellaU est et a civibus, at leges eis regis Edwardi observare liceret, quia optimse erant, non patris soi Henrici, quia graves erant. Verum ilia, non bono usa con- silio, prae nimia austeritate non acquievit eis." There seems to be a dark allusion to this matter in Hist. Nov. iii. 48, where the panegyrist of Robert describes him as busy '*justitiam et pcUrias Ugn et pa- cem reformando ; " and without more dis- tinctly blaming Matilda, he ^es on to say, " satis constat quod, si ejus modera- tioni et sapientiae a suis esset creditum, non tarn sinistrum postea seosissent ales 2o6 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. Henry which we meet with ; and it is singular that such a complaint should come from the citizens of London. But it may be remarked that Henrj^^'s great merit, the strict administration of justice, was of less importance to the men of a city who had such great franchises in their own hands than it was to the people of the smaUer towns and of the open country. And, on the other hand, the strictness of Henry's forest laws was no doubt felt by the citizens themselves and by the barons who had joined their commonalty. But the great point is that now, seventy- five years after the coming ofWilliam, the memory of the last native King is still cherished. His days, the days of the rule of Eadward, that is in truth the days of the rule of Godwine and of Harold, are still looked back to as the happy days of peace and righteousness. Nor is it only in some upland region, where the stranger had appeared only in his character of conqueror, that they are thus looked back to. The days of Eadward are still looked to with yearning by a city to which men flocked from every quarter of the worid, and among whose chief citizens a large proportion were undoubtedly of Norman blood. But the prayer of the men of London was unheeded. Matilda, who had worn her crown in the Eternal City, may have there been taught by Roman lawyers that law was whatever the prince deemed good,* and she may have learned to look on the dooms of Eadward and Henry as alike of little worth. All the answer that the citizens got was stem looks, reproaches for the favour which they had shown to Stephen and the money which they had spent in his cause, and pressing demands of money for her own use.' Meanwhile another Matilda was at their gates, one who had by birth as good a claim to the allegiance of Englishmen as her Imperial namesake, whose de- scent from the Old-English Kings was the same as her own, and who, if zeal and energy could win success, might have brought laurels lo any cause. While the Empress was trampling on their rights within their walls, the Queen was threatening them with all the horrors of war without.' The citizens made their choice ; they entered into a league on Stephen's behalf with his valiant wfe, and drove the Empress and her followers from their gates.* She fled to Oxford, and presently showed her spite by ordering the captive King, who had hitherto been kept in an honourable confinement, to be loaded with chains.* > "Quod principi placuit Icgis habet "astuti pectoris, virilisquc coostantis ▼igorem." fcmina," is described in the Gesta, 77, 78. * We get the most vivid picture of * The fullest account is that iu the Matilda's treatment of the Londoners in GesU, 78, 79. See also the Coatiouator. the Gesta, 77. But all our authorities 1141 ; Hist. Nov. iii. 48; John of Hex- bear witness to her extreme haughtiness. ham ; Will. Neub. i. 9 \ Henry of Huo* See Hen. Hunt. 225; Will. Neub. i. 9; tingdon, 325. John of Hexham, 270. * So says Henry of Huntingdon ; *• Irri- ' This campaign of Queeu Matilda, lata igitur muliebri angore, regem noctoni MATILDA AT OXFORD, 207 rain of stirring events followed. The Empress held her court ford, while her rival and namesake, in full possession of London, athering forces everywhere on behalf of her husband. Bishop f now openly changes sides ; so do his citizens of Winchester ; ve get a strange picture of Queen and Empress, the King of , the Earl and the Bishop, the citizens of London and Winchester, a manner besieging one another. In the end a large part of the f Winchester, and with it the New Minster, on its new site of , was burned, if not by the order, at least by the followers, of its own p.^ Then comes the captivity of Earl Robert under the keeping illiam of Ypres in Archbishop William's still new castle of ester (September 14, 1141),' the vain attempts of their two zea- vives to find in the exchange of King and Earl a means of settling eace of the kingdom,' and their final exchange, not as anything ig towards peace, but simply as restoring to each party a leader lal value.* We come to Stephen's siege of the Empress at Ox- and the famous tale of her escape from* Robert of Oily's castle ;mber, 1141).^ In the midst of all this we come across another I to compedibus poni juifit." Wil- r Malmobury (Hist. Nov. iii. 41) ready told us that Stephen was \ honourably treated (**honorifice progrediendi facultatem servatus no"); afterwards "amiulis ferreis tus est.** ir authorities now gradually fail us. :'s narrative was finished while the iras in prison. The Continuator off soon after the burning of ester. Henry of Huntingdon tells «7 at no great length. William of sbnry gives the account in Hist, ii. 50, but both the Continuator « author of the Gesta are fuller, lew Minster, the *'ecclesia Sancti ildi** of die Continuator, had d its site in mo. See Mr. b' Introduction to Liber de Hyda, feqq. The Chronicler does not Q the fire, but the description of oeen's action is vigorous ; ** )>a kinses cwen mid al hire strengthe, UBt beom, )«t \tx wzs inne micel e the story of Robert's captivity in Vlahns. Hist. Nov. iii. 51 ; Gesta, ont. Flor. Wig. 1151 ; Will. Neub. The Chronicler records his im- Qcnt at Rochester, and Gervase (1356) adds the name of his keeper, **Willielmus Yprensis, qui Cantia abute- batur." ■ This comes from the Continuator, who is copied by Gervase. An agreement is made between Queen Matilda and the Countess Mabel (** regina nimium satagente pro rege, et vicMromitissa — why vie$ ? it is *' comitissa " in Gervase — valde desudante pro comite **) to this effect ; " Ut rex suo restitutus regno, et comes sub eo totius Angliz sublimatus dominio, fierent ambo regui et patriae justi moderatores et pads recuperatores, sicut totius dissensionis et turbationis exstiterant incentores atque auctores." But Robert will not agree without the consent of the Empress, and that is not to be had. * The Chronicler thus tells it; ">a feorden |>e wise men betwyx ^ kinges freond and te Jrorles freond and sahtlede sua \^X me sculde leten ut )>e king of prisun for >e eorl, and te eorl for )>e king, and sua diden.*' See also Hist. Nov. iii. 58; Gesta. 85; Heu. Hunt. 225. ' The Chronicler again tells the tale ; *' pa >e king was ute, >a herde \tt\ saegen, and toe his feord and besaet hire in ISe tur, and me bet hire dun on niht of \t tur mid rapes, and stal ut and sex fleh and ixde on fote to Walingford." This is the last 208 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. synod, held this time at Westminster (December 7, 1141). in which we hear the Legate Henr)% now a loyal subject of his brother, defending lus twofold treason in his brother's hearing, and calling on men to deave to the King who had been anointed by the will of the people and by the consent of the Apostolic See, and to forsake the Countess of Anjou, no longer Lady of the English, but only Lady of the Angevins.* But now for some years there is little on which we need dwell. Several more years (1142-1144) were passed in local warfare of the same kind as that of which we have heard so much already. We hear of the striking deaths of more than one evil-doer,' and we get gaieral pictures of the state of the land, as fearful as that which our own Chroniclers gave us at an earlier stage of the struggle.' We still have the picture of a state of things in which, though the land is divided be- tween two parties, yet neither of their nominal chiefs is able to exerdse any real control over his followers, but each is obliged to put up with their evil deeds lest they should forsake him for his rival.* But, on the whole, the course of events was favourable to Stephen. We see him twice on his old battle-ground of Lincoln, striving against his old enemy Randolf of Chester. At one stage of the struggle (i 144) we find the faithless Earl besieged by the King in the scene of his old treason at Lincoln.* Then we see him returning to his allegiance, and presently imprisoned (1145) ^"^ ^^ gives up the precious fortress.* The recovery of the city which had suffered so much in Stephen's event recorded by William of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. iii. 74. The best known incident of the story comes from Henry of Huntingdon (225); "Non procul a natali aufiigit Imperatrix perTamasim gladatam, circumamicta vestibus albis, reverberatione nivis et similitudine fallentibus oculoi obsidcntium." Gervase (1358) tells the tale at greater length. It should be noted that in those days the river at Oxford was the Thames. * Hist. Nov. iii. 52. " Turbatores vero pads, qui comitissae Andegavensi faverent, ad excommunicationem vocandos, prseter earn qux Andegavorum domina esset.*' * William of Newburgh (i. 11, 12) gives two chapters to the evil deeds and the appropriate ends of Geoffrey of Mandeville and Robert of Marmion, both in the year 1144. For the fate of Miles, Earl of Hereford, see above, p. 195. ' See the two pictures in the Gesta (96, 120) of the general state of England, which may be compared with the more famous one in the Chronicle. In the first passage the writer rebukes the conduct of the fighting Bishops of the time, and complains specially of the foreign mer- cenaries; in the second he compUios chiefiy of the Welsh. See also the description in William of Newbor^ I 22. * William of Newburgh, n. s. •• Neuter in suos imperiose agere et disdplinae vigorem exercere poterat : sed uterque suos, ne a se deficerent, nihil negando mulcebat.** Hen. Hunt. 227 6; "Neutnim exaltare volebant ne, altero subacto, alter iis libere dominaretur, sed semper alter alterum metuens regiam in cos potestatem exercere non posset.'* This reminds one of Liudprand*s saying of tbe Italians (Antap. i. 57), how they wish ** semper geminis uti dominis, quateous ahenim alterius terrore coerceant. * * Hen. Hunt. 225. * This is recorded by the Chronicler with much emphasis, though not in its right order. Cf. Hen. Hunt. 3256; Gervase, 1361 ; Gesta, 124, 125. John of Hexham (278) seems to pot this under 1151. TAKING OF LISBON. 209 cause was worthily celebrated by a great national ceremony. Stephen held his Christmas (11 46-1 147) and wore his Crown with all royal pomp within the walls of the city into which he had once been led as a prisoner.^ By such a rite it might seem that his old ill luck on the same spot was wiped out, and that he began, as it were, another and a happier reign. And so in some sort it was. For, soon after the coronation feast at LincoUi, the city was again attacked by the old enemy; but this time (1147) Randolf was beaten back from its walls, as the King himself had been three years earlier. The Earl's chief captain lay dead before the Roman gate through which the Conqueror had entered, and the loyal citizens rejoiced and gave their thanks to the patroness who had defended the temple which* crowned their hilL* And, before long, Stephen was relieved in different ways from the presence of his two chief enemies. Eight years after her first coming to England as a claimant for its Crown (1147), the Empress, tired of the wretched struggle, withdrew to the continent,' and in the next year her brother and chief champion Earl Robert died.* This leads us to the third and last period of this time of anarchy. The last few years of Stephen's reign, when a new and mightier actor appears, may claim to be spoken of at somewhat greater length than a long series of sieges and skirmishes, rich indeed in local and personal in- terest, but which throw little light on our main subject. We may turn from them with satisfaction to a field on which men of Norman and English blood joined together in a more worthy cause. In the year that the Empress left England, a band of men, German, Flemish, Norman, and English, among whom we specially hear of men from London, Bristol, Southampton, Hastings, Kent, and Suffolk, set forth from the port of Dartmouth without any princely leader, joined the warfare of Alfonso of Portugal against the Infidels, wrested Lisbon from their hands, and enlarged the bounds of Christendom by a new episcopal see, of which a man, English by birth at least, Gilbert of Hastings^ was left as the first Bishop.^ An exploit like this is * Hen. Hunt. 2356. ••Duodecimo rex Stephanos anno ad natale Domini in orbe Lincoiliensi diademate regaiiter insignitus est, quo regum nullus introire, protiibenti- bos qoibusdam superstitiods, ausus fnerat." So Oenrase, 136a. It is odd that this bcUef was not mentioned earlier in the story. ' See Hen. Hont. 225 6. ■ Oerrase, 1563. " Imperatriz jam Angiicaue discordise tsedio afiecta, ante qnadragesimam in Normanniam trans- fretavit, malens sub tntela mariti sui in pace qniescere quam in Anglia tot mo- VOL. V. P lestias sustinere.** * In 1 1 48, according to John of Hexham, 376. Gervase (1361) puts it in 1146. See also the Gesta, 131. ■ See the tract "Osbemus de Ex- pugnatione Lyxbonensi" printed in Pro- fessor Stubbs' Chronicles and Memorials of Richard the First, i. cxliv., and the letter of Duodechin in the Annals of Saint Disibod, 1 1 47 (Pertz, xni. 27). On the aspect of these narratives with which I am most concerned I have said some- thing in Appendix W. Cf. Hen. Hunt. aa6. 210 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. indeed a relief amid the annals of a strife which we can hardlj honour with the name even of civil war. Before we come to the chain of events which connects this rdgn with the next, it may be well to glance at some of those ecclesiastical aflfairs of the time which do not come into immediate connexion with the political and military story. Stephen had the character of being a prince who had no great love for the clergy ; * they never forgave his seizure of the two Bishops ; and, like perhaps every other warrior of that time, he is charged with showing little regard to holy places in his military operations.^ But, as was natural in days when the dvil power was so weak, there was no time when the ecclesiastical power made greater strides than during the nineteen years of anarchy. We have seen how Stephen stooped to seek for a papal confirmation of his election to the Crown,' and how an ecclesiastical synod listened complacendy to the doctrine that the election of Kings lay in the clergy.^ During the same time, and under the administration of the same man, the Legate Henry of Winchester, a fashion of which particular instances may be found at earlier times took root and flourished. This was the fashion of appealing from English courts to the see of Rome." Nor was this wonderful, when Stephen himself^ as we have seen, stooped to make, or at least to think of making, an appeal of this kind in his own person.' Nor was this the only instance of Stephen's self-abasement before the papal power. Even when he plucked up heart to refuse a safe-conduct to a Cardinal, unless he pledged himself to do nothing against the rights of the kmgdom, he presently found himself driven to humble himself before the power which he had offended.' In all this we see the growth of > Hen. Hunt, %^^h, '* Rex Stephanus nnmquam clericos liquide dilexerat, et pridem duos incarceravit cpiscopos." ' As in the case of Lincoln (see abo7e, p. 198) and Wilton (see Gervase, 1358) ; Reading (Robert de Monte, 1152); Beverley (John of Hexham, 278). * See above, p. 164. * See above, p. 204. " Henry of Huntingdon goes too far when he says (aa6 6), in describing the synod of liSi. ** Totum illud concilium novis appellationibus infxanduit. In Anglia namque appellationes in usu non erant, donee eas Henricus Wintoniensis, dum legatus esset malo suo, crudeliter intrusit. In eodem namque concilio ad Romani ponti6cis audientiam ter appellatus est." William of Saint Carilef had appealed in 1088 ; see above, p. 50. * See above, p. 194. ^ According to John of Hexham (279), the Cardinal-Priest John in 1151 was refused a safe-conduct, ** nisi fidem daret k in hac profectione regno Anglorom miUum damnum quasrere." He went back and complained at Rome, and Stephen presently humbly invited him to England again. Cf. the dealings of Henry the Second with Cardinal Vivian, 1 176; Benedict, i. 118. Stephen's conduct doubtless stood forth in glaring contrast to the reverence with which David received the same Cardinal. One object of his mission was to distribute four pallia to the archiepiscopal sees of Ireland, which Robert de Monte (11 51) comments on as a breach of the rights of Canterbury. See above, p. 141, and vol. »v. pp. 359t 3^. DISPUTES ABOUT THE SEE OF YORK. 211 those innovations which the next Henry tried manfully to stop, but which it was left for the last Henry of all wholly to sweep away. In his ecclesiastical patronage Stephen stands vaguely charged with simony, but without any very distinct proof.* It is more certain that, like other Kings, he used ecclesiastical preferments as a way of providing for his own kinsfolk, though in one case he stumbled on a kinsman who was also a saint. On the death of Archbishop Thurstan of York (1140), the canons, or part of them, chose their Treasurer, William, a nephew of Stephen, a man, we are told, of the holiest Hfe, but whose election was set aside by Pope Eugenius on the ground that the archbishoprick had been uncanonically bestowed by die King. It was not till after the reign and death of his suc- cessor Henry Murdac that William obtained possession of the see." His own tenure of it was short, and, just before the end of Ste- phen's reign, he was succeeded by a Primate of less fame for holiness, but who played a larger part in the affairs of the world. This was Roger (1154-1181), then Archdeacon of Canterbury, who, as soon as he was elected to the Northern throne, showed his zeal for its rights in a form which sprang of the new ideas which were now creeping in. He would have consecration at the hands of Theobald, not in his character of Archbishop of Canterbury, but only in that of Legate of the Holy See.' His oflBce in the Southern metropolis was at once (1154) bestowed by Theobald on a man between whom and the new Archbishop of York there was to be a rivalry on other grounds besides the old dispute as to the dignity of their provinces. The vacant archdeaconry, the richest secular preferment in England under a bishoprick, formed the first great promotion of Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket of London.* William of York and Thomas of Canterbury both made their way, though by different paths, into the roll of canonized saints. Such was not the case with another kinsman whom Stephen placed ix\ a northern see, Hugh of Puiset, who is also called a nephew of ^e King, to whom * Henry of Winchester is made by William of Malmesbury (Hist. Noy. iii. 44) to complain of "abbatis yendit«, codesisB thesauris depilats." Cf. the ttory of the election to Saint Augus- tine's in Oerrase, 1370, and the Historia Pontificalis, 42, 44 (Pertz, zx. 544, 545-) * On the disputed election of Samt William of York, see John of Hexham, «68. 177; WiU. Neub.i. i*j; T. Stubbs, 1721, 1733, who speaks of him as ** streouissimi comitis Herbert! filius, ex Emma sorore regis Anglomm Stephani P proffenitns.** I can find no further notice of wis Emma. ' Such, according to the Yorkist Walter of Hemingburgh (i. 79), was the successful demand of the Chapter of York,' " ut eum non tamquam Cantuariensis archiepiscopns, sed apostolicae sedis legatus consecraret.** * Oervase, 1376. " Dedit archiepisoopns Cantuariensis archidiaconatum cuidam derico suo, scilicet Thomae de LondoniA, viro admodum strenuo atque ingenii perspicacis." So R. Howden, i. 213, who speaiks of him by the unusual description of* Thomas Beket." 212 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. he gave the bishoprick of Durham, and who during his long episco- pate (i 1 53-1 195) left a name behind him as a mighty ruler and builder, but not altogether as a model of ecclesiastical perfection.* Another prelate of Stephen's appointment, and who was said to be his son, Gervase Abbot of Westminster, was deposed on a cha^ of youthful folly in squandering the goods of his monastery.* But the reign of Stephen was one which left its mark in eccle- siastical matters in other ways than that of increased submission to the Roman See. It would indeed have been a reign to be noted, if one scheme which was proposed had been carried out, and if Ae ancient landmarks of our ecclesiastical geography had been wholly swept away. York was being practically, and was soon to be for- mally,' cut short of her spiritual territory by the growing inde- pendence of the Scottish Bishops. One daring spirit bad a dream of cutting Canterbury short also. The King's brother, Henry of Winchester, pleaded hard at Rome that the ancient capital should be raised to primatial rank, as the metropolitan see of Wessex. Failing this, he prayed that Winchester might at least, like Bamberg, be free from metropolitan jurisdiction, and have no superior but at Rome.* But the prayer was not heard; the ecclesiastical map of England, sensibly altered under Henry, received no changes imder Stephen; but Henry of Winchester, unable to be an Archbishop himself, lived to lay his consecrating hands on the head of an Arch- bishop more famous than Theobald.' But Stephen's reign was really a most memorable one in the internal history of the Northern province. There, notwithstanding occasional outrages, occasional breaches of ecclesiastical right, on the part of Count Alan and others,' comparative quiet reigned, and the work which had begun * WiU. Ncub. i. 25; John of Hexham, 381 ; Gervase, 1375. Sec hi$ pedigree and character in Professor Stubbs' Preface to the third volume of Roger of Howden, p. xxxiii. ' This son of Stephen is mentioned by Johnp of Hexham, aSi ; " Amoto abbate Gervasio, fiiio regis Stephani, qui res loci illius juveniliter dissipavit." » By the bull of Clement the Third in 1x88, professing to release the Scottish Church from its allegiance to York ; see Haddan, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, ii. 273. • These schemes of Henry come out in the Historia Pontificalis, 39 (Pcrtz, xx. 542); "Elaborare coepit ut ci pallium daretur et fieret archiepiscopus occidentalis Anglic, vel at ei legatio regni concederetur, vel saltern ut ecclesia sua eximeretur a jurisdictione Cantuariensis." The Pope rejects his prayer in a very strange parable. There is another refereocc to Henry's schemes in the Winchester Annals, 1 143; **£xegit apud papam quod de episcopatu Wintoniensi archiepiscopatum faceret, et de abbatia de Hida episcopatum, et quod episcopatum Cicestriae sibi subjiccret.** The reason is added ; " Hoc fecit propter crebram desertationem quse fiiit inter episcopum et archiepiscopum Cantuaris. Iste enim major videri voluit quam archi- episcopus, ille quam legatus." • Henry was the consecrator of Thomas of London, through the vacancy of the see of London. See Gervase, 1383. * See John of Hexham, 368, 271, 373, 276. But ail that happened in those parts was a mere trifle compared with what was going on in southern England. BEGINNING OF UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 213 under Henry still went on. The Cistercian religion flourished, and many monasteries of the new order arose during these troubled times.^ But of the general effect of these days of confusion on the conduct of the clergy we may judge from the state of things with which the next King found that he had to grapple." But there was one spot in England in which light arose during the thickest darkness. It was in the reign of Henry, and still more in the reign of Stephen, that we get the first glimpses in England of a higher education than could be given by schools attached to monas- teries and other churches. It is now that we see the beginnings of the system of universities, the first gatherings of independent masters and scholars, not attached to any great ecclesiastical foundation, and not as yet themselves gathered into endowed societies. The twelfth century saw the beginning of universities in England ; the thirteenth century saw the beginning of the incorporated and endowed colleges within them. The borough of Oxford, one of the chief towns of England, a point so speciaUy central for the whole land south of the Humber, a place free from the jurisdiction of any great ecclesias- tical lord, the seat neither of a Bishop nor of a monastery of the first rank, was a place well suited for the purpose which has given it all its later fame. No place could be better to become the seat of one of those voluntary settlements of students, which, though' they were in after times favoured by Popes and Kings and Bishops and nobles, yet preeminently, in the first instance, came of themselves. The two older characters of Oxford, as a great military post and as a special place for great national assemblies, both come out strongly in Stephen's time. To these characters the border town now began to add the new one which it has ever since kept, that of a seat of learning. In the days of Henry (i 133) we hear of the first public lectures in divinity, in the days of Stephen, amid the clash of arms, we find the first beginning erf" studies of a more general kind ; amid the special reign of brute force, the antidote appeared in the first systematic teaching of the science of law. In Henry's days, the lectures of the Breton Robert Pulan, who rose to high place at the Roman court, made the first beginnings of a faculty of theology.' * Will. Neab. i. 15. "Quid autem next year a Lotharingian prophetess an- sentiendam est de his et aliis locis religiosis, nounced to the order, '* quod aliquantulum quse in diebus regis Stepbani copiosius et teporem ordinis et firigus notaret cari- exstrui vel florere coeperunt denique multo tatis. ' This was just before the death of plora sub brevitate temporis, quo Stephanus Saint Bernard. regnayit, rel potius nomen regis obtinuit." * See the description of the state of T. Wykes, 1098; "Coepit pnllulare et things with which Henry and Thomas proficere ordo Cisterciensis." In 115a bad to deal in William of Newburgh, ii. (Robert de Monte, 1151) it was forbidden 16; Herbert of Bosham. iii. 17, 18; Wil- in the general ch^er of the Cistercians to Ham Fitz-Stephen, Giles, 207-215. found any more abbeys of the order, as ' Chron. Osney, 1133. "Magister there were already fiire hundred. In the Robertus Pulein scripturas dif inas, quz in 214 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. In Stephen's days, but not till the crowned Augusta had left the land (1149), Vacarius began his first teaching of the Imperial law.* In after days, in a kindred land, Leyden received the foundation of its University as the reward of the endurance of the city during its famous siege. The University of Oxford has no foundation and no founder; she grew up from a seed cast forth at random. But her first step towards a wider and more liberal culture took place at the moment when Oxford had lately recovered from a siege less glorious than that of Leyden. The picturesque incidents of that siege have become so famous that the work which was then going on within the walls of Oxford has been forgotten. The origin of the great body which took its first root in the times with which we are dealing has been carried back to distant ages, and has become the subject of legend, and worse than legend. We now turn to the third period of Stephen's reign (114^1154), the period whose events form a continuous chain leading us on into times which lie beyond the immediate scope of our present narrative. We must turn our eyes from the setting to the rising sun, from Stephen and Matilda alike to the renowned son of Matilda, who forms the central figure diuing the years which fol- lowed the departure of his mother and the death of his uncle. What Henry the Second was has been set before us in a living portrait by the greatest scholar of our time,* and the lines drawn by that master hand I will not weaken by a single touch. I have now to deal with Henry only in the first beginnings of his career, in his childhood and in his youth; of his reign as an epoch in English history I shall have to speak in the form of the merest sketch in the last stage of this volume. But the restorer of law and order, the prince whom " all folk loved, for he did good justice and made peace," ^ may stand forth, in the few years of his active life which come within the range of this Chapter, as somewhat of a relief to the wretched scenes which we have been going through. His birth has been already recorded as a gleam of joy which lighted up the de- clining years of his grandfather ; and he might almost seem to have Anglia obsoluerant, apud Ozoniam legere * Gervase, 1665. *'Taoc leges et coepit. Qui postea, cum ex doctrina ejus causidici in Angliam primo Tocati sunt, ecclesia tarn Aoglicana quam Gallicana quorum primus erat magister Vacarius; piurimum profecisset, a papa Lucio se- hie in Oxenefordia legem docutt." Cf. cundo yocatus et in cancellarium sancte Robert de Monte, 1 1 49. Romans ecclesiae promotus est." So the ' See Professor Stubbs' Preface to the Waverley Annals, 1 145. See more of our second volume of Benedict. first Doctor in John of Hexham, 375, ' Chron. Petrib. 1140. "Al folc him where he is described as " Britannia luuedc, for he dide god iuttise and makede oriundus." Can we hope that the greater pais." These are nearly the last words of Britain is meant? the venerable record. HENRY OF ANJOU. 215 the peculiar character of the position which he was to fill in history stamped upon him by the place of his birth. The eldest son of Geoffrey and Matilda was called, like the Emperor Charles the Fifth in later times, to be ruler over a vast gathering of lands and nations, whose one common tie was his rule over them. Henry could not, any more than Charles, be claimed as an exclusive countryman of any of them. For the purpose of our history the chief point is that, if he was not English, neither was he Norman. His connexion with Normandy and with England, with the blood of Rolf and with the blood of Cerdic, was of exactly the same kind ; in both cases alike it was an inheritance handed on to him by his mother. Far more than either Norman or English, he was Angevin. But we must not forget that the reigning house of Anjou from which he sprang was itself Angevin only on the spindle-side, and that the true cradle of his father's house was the petty county of the Gatinois.^ Called to be lord from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees, to be more truly lord of all Britain than any King that had gone before him, called on the mainland to unite in his own person the dominions of the princes of Normandy, of Anjou, and of Aquitaine, he was fittingly the country- man of none of them, born on the soil neither of England nor of Normandy, neither of Anjou nor of Aquitaine. Yet he was born in a city whose ancient fame made it a worthy birth-place for one who was to inherit the claims of so many houses, and to rule over so many lands. The eldest-bom of Matilda first saw the light in that city of Le Mans whose name has filled so large a place at so many stages of our history, and whose name, calling up the remembrance of the deeds of its Counts, its Bishops, and its citizens, always carries with it a charm peculiar to itself.' The man who was to unite Normandy and Anjou was fittingly bom in the city for which Nor- mandy and Anjou had so long striven. The man who was to unite both with Aquitaine was fittingly bom in the city in whose buildings the traveller from England or Normandy begins to feel that he has taken his first step toward the land of the South. And the man who was to unite Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine with England was fittingly bom in the land and the city which English valour bad once won for the Norman Conqueror. The man who was to mle over so many nations, without himself belonging to any one of them, could have no such fitting birth-place as a city at once so famous and so central, connected by one tie or another with each of the lands over which he was to mle. But the events of Henr/s childhood and youth gradually made ^ See vol. iii. p. lai. the birth and baptism of Henry are set * See above, pp. 68, 137. and vol. iii. forth in full by the Biographer of the p. 124, voL if. p. 569. The rejoicings at CeDomanman Bishops (Vet. Ad. iii. 337)* 2l6 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. him familiar with all the lands which were one day to be his. When he was nine years old (1142), his father, then engaged in his gradual conquest of Normandy, sent him over, at the request of his uncle Earl Robert, to join his mother, who was then in die thick of her strife with Stephen in England.* It was well for the interests of the party of the Empress that the child to whom they looked as the future King of the English' should early make himself known to those who were fighting in his cause. And, even at that early age, his precocious intellect ^ was perhaps already able to take in some lessons of war and statesmanship, and certainly those arts could be learned under no better living master than his uncle of Gloucester. And, as became the nephew of Robert and grandson of Heniy, we read that his literary education was not neglected, and the memory of his teacher, Matthew by name, has been handed down to us.^ Henry had stayed four years in England (11 42-1 146), safe in his uncle's fortress of Bristol, when his father, now the acknowledged Duke of the Normans, sent for him to tarry with him at least for a while, and the Earl parted from his promising nephew with grief.* Three years later Henry was deemed old enough to receive the belt of knighthood, and the opportunity was taken again to stir up the zeal of the partisans of the Empress, or more truly of her son, which had greatly slackened since the death of Earl Robert* Henry therefore left his books and began to practise the exercises of war.' He entered England at the head of a large array ; he made his way to Carlisle, where he was gladly received by his mother's uncle King David. At the hand of the King of Scots Henry received ( 1 149) the badges of knighthood, and, so it is said, he pledged himself that, if he should ever succeed to the English Crown, he would confirm the grant to David of Newcastle and all the lands between Tweed and Tyne.® Special rivalry hence arose between Henry and Stephen's * Sec Oervase, 1357. ^11^ J W»JJ- Malms. Hist Nov. iii. 70-1, 73; Robert de Monte, 1141. ^ Orderic (763), writing not later than 1 141, speaks of him as one "quern multi populi dominum exspectant, si Deus omni- poteos, in cujus manu sunt omnia, con- cesscrit." The holy hermit Wulfric of Haslebury (Genrase, 1 361) prophesied to him that he would be King. * Henry of Huntingdon (227) calls him " puer annis, mcnte senilis.** So John of Hexham, 278; **Viribus corporis prae- validus, moribus quiddam senile praefcrens." * According to Gervase, 1358, " traditus est magisterio cujusdam Matthai litteris imbuendus et moribus bonestis, ut talem decebatpnerum,institaendas." OnRobert*s own scholarship, see above, p. 167. * Gervase, 1361, 1362. « lb. 1366. The partisans of Matilda would not go on with the war, ** nisi ipse, quem omnia de jure contingebaot, in Angliam rediret." ^ lb. ** Postpositis litteranim ttudiis, exercitia coepit miliuria frequentare.** ' The knighthood at the hands of David is recorded by all our writers ; Hen. Hunt. 226; Robert de Monte, 1 149; John of Hexham, 277; Gervase, 1366; iBthelred of Rievaux, 347, who enlarges on the privilege of being knighted by such a King as David. William of Newburgh (i. 22) adds the important provision. EARLY YEARS OF HENRY. 217 son Eustace,^ who was at the same time knighted by his father at York, whither Stephen had come to watch the course of affairs on the Scottish border.* Randolf of Chester was at Henry's knighting, and did homage to David. He had given up his old grudge about Cum- berland, and it was agreed that he should have in exchange the new- made earldom of Lancaster,' a land which, it will be remembered, has no place in Domesday as a shire. Randolf, Henry, and David were all to make a vigorous war upon Stephen. But Randolf, as usual, forsook his allies, and the new-made knight went back beyond sea, soon to inherit, by the death of his father (i 151), the county of Anjou and its dependencies, as well as the duchy of Normandy, with which he is said to have been already invested.* From this time he appears in our history as Duke of the Normans, but he plays no further part in English affairs for some short time. War still went on between Stephen and his enemies; Worcester specially suffered.* But meanwhile Duke Henry was increasing his continental dominions in another way. Soon after his father's death came the marriage which has been already spoken of, which extended his dominions to the Spanish frontier. In the pithy words of our own Chronicler, " The Queen of France tedeaUd from the King, and she came to the young Earl Henry, and he took her to wife, and all Poitou with her." • But by this marriage he made himself an enemy in Eleanor's former husband as bitter as any that he had in Stephen or Eustace.^ The union of his foes on both sides of the sea brings us to the last stage of our story. Eustace, as we have seen, had long been betrothed to Lewis's sister Constance; he now married her, but our Chronicler makes ** przstita prins, ut dicitur, cautione, quod nulla parte terranim quae in ejusdem regis cz Anglii ditionem transttsent ejus olio tempore mutilaret haeredes." So R. How- dcn« i. 31 1 ; ** Prius dato sacrameoto quod, si ipse rex Angliae fieret« redderet ei NoTum Castellum et totam Northimbriam, et permitteret ilium et hcredes suos in pace sine calnmniA in perpetuum possidere totam terram quz est a fluYio Twede ad flurium Tine." ' Oenrase, 1374; John of Hexham, 278. ' Hen. Hunt. aa6; Genrase, 1367; John of Hexham, 278. • John of Hexham, 277. * Robert de Monte (1 150) says dis- tinctly, ** Pater suus reddiderat ei haeredi- tatem suam ex parte matris, scilicet ducatum Normannise." But the Chroni- cler and the other English writers, Henry of Huntingdon (226 a), Gervase (1370), and William of Newburgh (i. 39), all speak as if Henry did not succeed to Normandy till his father's death. * See Hen. Hunt. 226, 226 6; Genrase, 1370. • "Te cuen of France todselde fra \t king, and scse com to ]>e iunge eorl Henri, and he toe hire to wine, and all Peitou mid hire." For details we may go to Robert of Gloucester, i. 466. ^ See Genrase, 1370. 1371 ; Will. Neub. i. 31; Robert de Monte, 1151, who adds, "Habebat [Ludovicus] duas filias de ea, et ideo nolebat ut ab aliquo ilia filios exciperet, unde praedict« fUiz suae exluereditarentur." Ralph the Black, on the other hand (p. 92), says, " Traduxit uxorem Alianor rdietam Lodovici regis Franciae." He could not think that Lewis was dead. 2l8 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND, a wide distinction between the characters of the husband and the wife, the "evil man and good woman." ^ Lewis and Eustace and Henry's own younger brother Geoffrey now set upon Normandy (1152), but with no great success. The special scene of warfiue was the old battle-ground of the Vexin, which Henry's father Geo&ey had again given up to France, but which Henry took occasion ii the French invasion to reclaim.' Stephen now deemed that it was time to take some measure for securing the succession of the Crown to his own house. His wish was to have Eustace crowned m his own lifetime. It was now held that this could not be done without the consent of the Pope;' and it is said that this objection was suggested to the mind of Archbishop Theobald by one to whom few then looked as his successor in the patriarchal chair, his own clerk, Thomas of London, The case was argued before the Papal court. Stephen's right to the Crown was fully discussed, and. King by the consent of the Holy See as he had once been called, it was decided that the royal consecration could not be given to the son of a King who had gained his Crown by perjury.* Theobald and the assembled Bishops obeyed the Papal command, and refused to crown or anoint Eustace. The wrath of Stephen and his son was great, and the temporalities of all the Bishops who had refused were for a moment seized into the King's hands.^ Meanwhile WalHogford and other castles were held for Henry, and the Duke of the Normans was prayed to come and bring help to the men who were striving in his cause.* He came, and this time he came for some purpose. The war went on, especially at Wallingford and at Stamford,^ and " The Chronicler tells us, "J>a ferde Eustace ]>e kiuges sune to France, and nam ))e kinges suster of France to wife, wende to bigaeton Normandi Jner )nirh, oc he spedde litel." He adds, " and be gode rihte, for he was an yuel man, ... he dide mare yuel ]nnne god. . . . Ood wimman scae waes, oc scz hedde litel blisse mid him, and Xpist ne wolde )?aBt he sculde lange rixan.** * See Robert dc Monte, 1151, 1152. ' See Hen. Hunt. aa6 6 ; Gervase, 1371. The application to Rome and the debate which followed it there are to be found in the Historia Pontificalis, 41 (Pertz, xx. 543). Bishop Henry " promisit se datunim operam et diligentiam ut apostolicus Eustachium filium regis coronaret. Quod utique fieri non licebat, nisi Romani pontificis veni& impetrat&." I have already (see above, p. 167) had to refer to some of the points argued in this debate. * Gervase, 1371, who adds, " Hoc fac- tum est subtilissima providentia et (ter- quisitione cujusdam Tbomae clerici natione Londoniensis ; pater ejus Gilebertus, mater vero Mathildis vocabatur." This is Gcr- vase's first mention of his hero. In the Bermondsey Annals, 113a, the great fire of London in that year arose **de igne Gilberti Bcket." ' See the details in Hen. Hunt. 226 h. According to the Waverley Amialist, 1 151, homage was done to Eustace. ' Hen. Hunt, and Gervase, n. i. ^ See Henry of Huntingdon, 226 ^ 2176; Robert de Monte, 115a, who records an unpleasant fact; **Dqz in quadam turre lignea [this was 00 the bridge at Wallingford] zz. milites jam ceperat, exceptis Ix. sagittariis quos de- capitari fecerat." To say nothing of the cruelty, the chivalrous distinction between tori and etorl is too much m the style of William Rufus or the Black Prince. VARIOUS DEATHS. 219 many who found that, while it lasted, they were freed from the necessity of obeying either master strove that it might still go on.^ But Stephen was weary of the struggle ; his wife, the main stay of his cause, was dead ; so was his brother Theobald.' His spirit was softened; he hearkened (1153) to proposals of peace, and met Duke Henry in a personal conference to discuss them. Nothing was settled, but the fierce spirit of Eustace was kindled at the very name of peace. He began to harry the eastern shires far and wide. Sud- denly he died (1153), as men said, like Swegen in time past, as be was preparing to spoil the great monastery of Saint Eadmund.' Other deaths followed, and among them the deaths of several men who were hindrances to peace. Such was Simon Earl of North- hampton ; * such was the more famous Randolf of Chester, who at last ended his career of treason by poison given to him, as it was said, by the namesake and descendant of the first William Peverel of the Peak.* And one of higher rank and of purer fame died in the same year. Henry, the eldest son of King David, was already dead (June 1 2, 1 152). His father now followed him (May 24, 1 153). The hereditary principle had made such strides in Scotland that Henr/s young son Malcolm (1153-1165) was acknowledged as successor to the Scottish Crown, whUe David's younger son William succeeded to Northumberland and the other fiefs of Stephen's granting." Stephen himself now stood almQst alone among men of his own standing. It might have seemed as if the old generation was being swept away to make room for the mighty ruler who was coming, and for the no less mighty spirit who was to be, first his minister, and then his rival All things now tended towards peace. Archbishop Theobald pressed it on the contending princes, and Bishop Henry, who had now seen the error of his ways, joined in the same good work.^ A treaty was concluded at Winchester (November 6, 1 153), which was re- ceived with universal joy, as bringing hope that an end was now to be put to the long reign of utter wretchedness, to the nineteen winters which England had Sioled for her sins/ ' See aboire, pp. 169, 208. * John of Hexham, a8i, aSa. " ToUens • Matilda died in 1 153 (Genrasc, 1 37 a); omnis populus temc Melcholmum, filium Theobald in the same year (Robert de Henrici comitls filii ipsius David regis, Monte, 1 151). >P"^ Scotiam, sicut consuetudo illios na- » Hen. Hunt. aa7 6; John of Hexham, tionis est, puerum admodum duodennem, aSa ; William of Newburgh, i. 30. constituerunt regem pro Darid aro suo." Oerrasc (1374) ^^'^ the intended attack Cf. Will. Neob. i. 33. on Saint Eadmond's. Cf. ToL i. p. 40a. ' Hen. Hunt. aaS; Gervase, 1375. * Hen. Hunt. aa76. See above, p. 199. • The general joy is strongly set forth » Robert de Monte, 11 55; Gervase, by Henry of Huntingdon, aaS. On the 1 jy y. detaib of the treaty, see Appendix £E. 220 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. The famous treaty which ended the anarchy was, in its proviaons, ver}' like two later treaties, which were in the same way designed to put an end to a time of war and confusion, but which were less suc- cessful in achieving their purpose. The treaty between Stephen and Henry went on the same general principle as the Treaty of Trqy« between Henry the Fifth and Charles the Sixth, and as the pariii- mentary award between Henry the Sixth and Richard Duke of Yoik In all three cases, the dispute between the actual possessor and die claimant of the Crown was setded by the compromise that the actual possessor should keep the Crown for life, but that it should pass at his death to the claimant who thus waived his immediate right In all three cases, the prince who thus became King-elect bdbre tut vacancy was to have the rights of an heir-apparent, and something more. Richard in England and Henry in France were to be actial regents of the kingdoms to which they were one day to succeed; and Henry was put into something like the same position by Ste- phen's agreement to be guided in all things by his counsel In al three cases a son of the reigning King was to be shut out of his rights. By the treaty of Winchester Stephen was to remain King of the English for life, but Duke Henry became his adopted son and declared successor.* Stephen's surviving son William was secured in his own estates and in diose of his wife the heiress of Warren, and in the succession to the hereditary estates of his father. And, bj a provision which was for the moment more important than all, ail die castles which had sprung up unlawfully during the days of confusioo were to be swept away. Other assemblies followed. In one hdd at Christmas at Westminster the terms of the treaty were put forth in the form of a solemn charter, and another proclamation again denounced the unlawful casdes and all breaches of the peace of every kind In another gathering at Oxford (January 13, 1154), the King's son Earl William and all the chief men of the land did homage to Hemy Duke of the Normans as the chosen successor to the English Crown. According to one account, the new heir-apparent was actually in- vested with the office of Justiciar ; * at all events he made it his duty carefully to look to the peace of the land. In another assembly held at Dunstable some displeasure was expressed by the Duke that the destruction of the castles had not been carried out so thoroughly as it should have been. But there was no open breach between him and the King ; and we have the word of the national Chronicler that die land now enjoyed such a peace as it had never enjoyed before, thai is, we may suppose, such as it had never enjoyed since the death of Heniy.^ ^ Hen. Hunt. 328. So the charter in Constitntional History, i. 333. Rymer. i. 18. • Chron. Pctrib. 1 140. •* Hit ward sone ' R. Howdec, i. 21a. See Stubbs, suythe God pais, sua ^t neore wis here." ACCESSION OF HENRY THE SECOND. 221 first time m our story, a devise of the Crown made before vacancy took eflfect. The treaty between Stephen and not pass away like the two other treaties with which I )ared it. Henry went back to his duchy. Meanwhile in len said that Stephen at last was really King.* He was > act vigorously against the unlawful castles,* and to attend jtical ajBfairs, especially to supplying the vacant see of York rchbishop.* But his new reign was a short one; before IS out, Stephen died at Canterbury (October 25, 1 154),* and 1 by his faithful Queen in the monastery of his own it Faversham. There was no doubt as to his successor, ras the longing for peace, so great was the fame of Henry, 3ked to him with such trust as the man who had at last e and would keep it, that the interregnum passed by without J.* For a few weeks the rule of England was in the hands hop Theobald/ Then Duke Henry crossed the sea, he received by all men, and on the Sunday before Midwinter ^-eight years after the crowning of his mother's grand- uy the Second, the inheritor of the name and the greatness :, was anointed King at Westminster (December 20, 11 54).'' Jie adulterine casdes were swept away, and the Flemish e driven out of the land.* England had again a King ; >f law had begun once more ; and men deemed too that s had come back, now that England had again a King of of Eadgar the Peaceful and Eadward the Unconquered. 7, as much and as little Norman as he was English, felt > listen to panegyrists who cast aside his descent from the Normandy and Anjou, and hailed him as the King of the y stock, the son of Matilda, the daughter of Matilda, the f Margaret, the daughter of Eadward, the son of Eadmund, Bt. aaS; Will. Neub. i. 30. onider; **)>a was \t k. ne he araert her was.'* Yet '6) speaks of a conspiracy ings to kill Henry, which ' something about, at. 339; Will. Neub. i. 33. implies that it was only ath which hindered dis- n beginning again. ;, p. 311. ile Winchester Annalist sends e world with an uncharitable anno migrarit rex Stephanus eum merita sua ducebant.*' Hunt. 338 6; R. de Monte, le Chronicler; **^ >e king was ded, "Sa was ^ eorl beionde sc, and ne dunte nan man don o)>er bnte god, for >e micd eie of him." The words seem borrowed from the picture of his grand- finther. • According to Gerrase (1376) the peace was kept "nutu dirino et co- operante Theodbaldo Cantuariensi archi- episcopo." » Hen. Hunt. 328 h ; Will. Neub. ii. i; Gerrase, 1376. Oddly enough, it is only Robert de Monte who uses the phrase *« ab omnibus electns et in regem unctns." William of Newburgh says, ** hsBfeditarium regnum suscepit." " Genrase, 1376, speaks of** Flandrenses lupi," ** hipi aoUci.** 222 THE NORMAN KINGS IN ENGLAND. the son of ^thelred.^ Rufus, Henry, Stephen, all had the Wood erf Cerdic and Woden in their veins no less than Heniy the Second Bat men had forgotten a pedigree which had to be traced through a long line of foreign princes in Flanders. Henry's descent from the old stock was nearer and clearer to men's eyes. The prophecy of the dying Eadward had been fulfilled ; the days of usurpation and foreign rule were over ; the green tree had come back to its place ; if its Imperial leaves were somewhat withered, its kingly fruit was there in all its richness and sweetness.^ In all this there was something of the willing delusion of a people that takes its memories for hopes. But there was truth in the feeling also. The time of mere conquest, mere foreign rule, was over. England and Normandy alike were now to become for a while mere parts of a dominion on both sides of the sea such as had never been seen before. Of that dominion England was only so far the centre as she gave its sovereign his highest title. But no one could any longer hint that she was a dependency of a single duchy on the mainland. England was in one sense more in- dependent, more powerful, more truly England, under Heniy the First than she was under Henry the Second. Henry the First was at least bom on English soil, and England was the greatest part of his dominions. It was Normandy, conquered by the might of Enghnd at Tinchebrai, that was the dependency. Henry the Second was bom, not at Selby, but at Le Mans, and the vast continental dominions which he mled as Duke and Count counted for at least as mudi in his eyes as the island which made him a King. But it was England which did make him a King ; the King of the English — changing step by step into the King of England — was the greatest prince of the West, far greater than his nominal lord at Paris, equal in real power even to the renowned Emperor whose rule began almost at the same moment as his own. And, with the fame of her King, the fame of his kingdom grew in foreign lands, and the feeling that they belonged to one of the greatest powers of the world grew in men's hearts wiSiin his kingdom. Under Henry, England is no dependency of Nor- mandy ; Normandy is no dependency of England ; none of the lands united under his mle is a dependency of any other. If his rule was not purely English, the course of his reign paved the way for a rule > This is the burthen of the epistle Aquitanonun dux, ADd^aTetuium comes, written by Abbot ^thelred to Henry at Anglue haBres." The whole point of tbe some moment between his marriage with tract is to set forth Hexny's EofKdi Eleanor and the death of Stephen, which descent, which is traced ap toEcg- bears the name of Genealogia Regum berht, Cerdic, Woden, Noah, and Adtin, Anglorum (X Scriptt. 347). Henry is without a word either aboot WiUiain " Andegavensium gloria, Normannorum and Rolf or about Tertullus and Tor- tutela, spes Anglorum, Aquitanorum quatius. decus ; " and again, ^ Normannorum ct ' See yol. iiu p. 7. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY, 223 which should he purely English. The merely Norman period of our history has passed away, when we have a King who, if not horn on EngUsh soil, if sprung of English blood only through a remote female descent, was at least not a Norman, save in a sense in which he might equally be called an Englishman. CHAPTER XXIV. THE POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.* As we have now reached the end of the stricdy Norman period of English history, our main narradve is done. We have now only to give such a short sketch of the century and a half that followed, from the accession of the Angevin dynasty to the death of Edward the First, as may point out the way in which the immediate results of the Norman Conquest passed away, while its lasting results remained and bore fruit. Speaking generally, we may say that the final results ^ At this stage I bid farewell to the continuous use of ancient writers, as direct authorities in the way of narrative. The original materials for this Chapter are to be found alike in the direct statements and in the casual expressions of a crowd of writers of all dates, both those to whose guidance we have been hitherto used, and many others. It is not my btisiness here to write a complete Con- stitutional History, even of the times with which I am immediately concerned. If I had ever thought of doing so, any such design would have been made needless by the appearance of the great work of Pro- fessor Stubbs, after my last Chapter was written, but before this Chapter was begun. To his work I would send all who wish to go minutely into the details of the whole subject. What I have endeavoured to do myself is to give a sketch of results, looked at from the spedal point of view of my own History, keeping such points of detail as it seemed impossible to pass by for discussion in the Appendix. How much I have benefited by Professor Stubbs* work will be seen in every page. On most points it will be seen that my notions are the same as his ; and I could not always undertake to point out where I have directly learned from him, and where views to which I hid been led by independent research have been confirmed by his authority. Ob some points however I have Tentnred to adhere to views already fonned which are not exactly the same as his. But, whether we admit every one of the Professoc's conclusions or not, the book is one which stands almost alone for a knowledge of its subject which is absolutely exhaustive, and for an accuracy in detail which it absolutely unfailing. But my Appendix will show that I have not gone to P^ fessor Stubbs only, bat that I have made use of other writers, ancient and modera, German and English. Sir Francis Pal- grave's History of the English Commoo- wealth remains a memorable book, erco beside its greater successor. The worb of Dr. Gneist, Das Englische Verwaliung*' reckt, Berlin, 1867, and Self-Govmtmmt, Communtdvetfassung^ und VtnoaUtmgi- geriehU, Berlin, 1 87 1, have also their use, but in point of accuracy they form a marked contrast to that of Professor Stubbs. Several other German works which bear on special parts of my main subject, or which deal with English matters only as parts of a wider whole, will be found referred to else- where. CONTINUITY OF ENGLISH HISTORY, 225 le Norman Conquest were to call forth again the Old-English : under new forms, and, in the same way under new forms, to I fresh life into the Old-English institutions which for a moment It seem to have been swept away. It was said l9ng ago, by one ;e lightest words were weighty, that England was " assuredly a IX by the Conquest." * And so it was, though perhaps not alto- IX in the sense in which those words were meant by him who e them. England was a gainer by the Conquest. But England id, not so much by anything which our Norman conquerors ght with them, as through our own stores which it was an indirect It of the Conquest to preserve to us. When we compare our history • the history of kindred lands beyond the sea, with Germany or I Denmark, we shall see that the final effect of conquest by the \ iger was to enable us to preserve more of the spirit and institu- ; of earlier times, to keep up a more unbroken continuity with ti times, than fell to the lot of our kinsfolk who never underwent a momentary scourge. We have never had to build up again political system from the beginning. We have never had to draw up nstitution ; we have never been left without a national assembly, may still use the language of King Henry's charter, and say that aws by which we are ruled are the laws of King Eadward with :hanges made by King William. We have never seen, as Denmark the growth of a nobility whose privileges were so great and so ful that, sooner than any longer endure their yoke, the nation V itself at the feet of the King, and clothed him, by a legal act, the full powers of a tyrant. Denmark is again free; but her k>m is a thing of yesterday ; it is not an unbroken inheritance led on from the days of Swegen and Cnut, but the grant of a otic King of our own day. We have never split asunder, as nany did, under the power of a crowd of petty princes, trampling T foot alike the lawful powers of the Crown and the rights and ties of the people. Germany too, like Denmark, has risen in our days to a truer life, but that too is not an unbroken life. It is a vhich was kindled afresh by the presence in the land of enemies king the same tongue as those who overcame us on our own soil a centuries and a half earlier. As the Norman Conquest of \ land preserved the old national life of England, so the momentary I ch conquest of Germany stirred up again the old national life 1 rermany. But there was this difference, that the one preserved ' the other stirred up. In Germany the invader was a mere foreign ly who had simply to be driven out as soon as the nation had ered strength for the good work. In England the invader was a lised kinsman, who could be won over and changed into a fellow- * Gibbon, cap. Iri. foI. z. p. 253, ed Milman. )L. V. Q 226 POUTICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. worker. Still neither in Denmark nor in Germany has there been the same imbroken political life which we can trace in England. The mission of preserving, often in new forms, but in new forms quickened by the old spirit, the ancient institutions of the Teutonic race has been given to the Angle and the Saxon, not in their older land, bat in the island which they made their second home. And this preser- vation of our ancient national being we owe, more than to any other cause, to our momentary overthrow by men of another speech. And we owe it in no small degree to the personal character, the iron wiD, the far-seeing wisdom, of the Conqueror himself. The general results of the Conquest form the subject of the present volume. Its immediate results on the constitution and the general position of England form the special subject of the present Chapter. We have to see how the state of things at home and abroad was affected by the transfer of the Crown to a King of foreign birth, the possessor of foreign dominions, who, as a matter of fact, made his way to his Crown by the power of the sword, but who in all things carefully gave himself out as one who had succeeded to the kingdom by legal right. This peculiar position of William has affected all our later history. There have been revolutions and conquests of manj kinds. An internal revolt which changes a form of government, which overthrows a King or a dynasty — the peaceful accession of a foreign King, either by election or by the accident of hereditary suc- cession— the settlement in a new land of a chief and his people who win for themselves a new home and cut asimder all ties which bound them to the old one— the annexation of one country to another, as the mere result of war or negotiation — all these are events which have happened in many times and places in the world's history. Several of them have happened at different times in the history of our own island. The Norman Conquest of England has points of likeness to several of them ; but in so far as it is like one it is unlike another. It is in itself something different from any of the various forms of conquest and revolution which we have just gone through. None of them by itself could have had the peculiar results which William's conquest of England had. A mere internal revolution, without any pressure from without, may, as the example of France shows, cut a nation off from its own past, in a way that has never happened to this island or its inhabitants since we ourselves made our way into it. A mere foreign annexation, the result either of open conquest or of force veiled under the guise of diplomacy, may, as the world has seen in Poland and elsewhere, altogether blot out the national being of a people. The incoming of a foreign dynasty, perhaps the mere incoming of a foreign Queen, may sometimes change the whole internal state of a country. It may sometimes involve a SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE CONQUEST. 227 country in a system of foreign policy before unknown to it. The internal condition of Scotland was altogether changed through the marriage of Malcolm and Margaret; the European condition of England was altogether changed (1688) by the election to her Crown of princes of the houses of Orange and Hanover. In the time with which we are now immediately concerned, a change of this last kind affected both England and Normandy, when kingdom and duchy together passed to the Count of Anjou and the Duchess of Aquitaine. And, to go back to earlier times, a nation settling in a conquered land, parting wholly from their old home and sweeping away the former inhabitants of their new home, may start afresh as a new nation on a new soil, and may begin a new history which has hardly any reference to the former history either of the land of their origin or of the land of their settlement. This last we ourselves did when we left the elder England by the Elbe and the Eyder, to make a new England by the Thames, the Severn, and the Humber. The great change which Domesday marks by the simple formula that '*King William came into England" differs in itself and in its results from all these. William, as we' have so often seen, claimed the Crown according to English law. It was therefore his policy to profess all reverence for the law by which he claimed it, to make no more change in the laws and customs of his king- dom than was absolutely forced upon him by the circumstances in which he found himself. In this he differs from domestic revolu- tionists, whether their revolution takes the form of anarchy or of tyranny, of popular revolt or of royal oppression. He differs alike from Charles and Philip trampling out the liberties of Castile and Aragon, and from those destroyers alike of good and bad who have made the France of the old monarchy a thing further away from our own days than the England of the West-Saxon Kings. But though William was no systematic, no deliberate, destroyer of the state of things which was before him, yet his character of legal claimant would have stood him in little stead had he not been able to maintain it by force of arms- And, as a stranger, he could maintain it only by the swords of strangers. Hence some of the results of foreign con- quest could not fail to follow on his accession. He did not sweep away our laws, our customs, or our language, but the presence of the stranger King and his stranger followers modified law, custom, and language in a way which has left its traces to this day. Lastly, Wil- liam was not only a foreigner but a foreign prince, a prince whose conquest of England in no way carried with it the surrender of his older dominions. His chief followers too were men who held lands beyond the sea, and who, in receiving new settlements in our island, had no mind to snap the ties which bound them to their own land. Thus the accession of the Norman Duke to the English Crown at Q a 228 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST, once changed the European position of a kingdom whose ruler was now also one of the rulers of the mainland. In all these ways Wil- liam's Conquest of England has a character of its own, different from any other recorded conquest, and it has had results different from the results which have followed from any other recorded conquest It gave us a foreign infusion into our blood, our laws, and our language; but, in so doing, it aroused the old national spirit to fresh life, and gave the conquered people fellow-workers in their conquerors. It drew England, as an appendage to a foreign state, into foreign wars and foreign policy; but, in so doing, it taught England gradually to claim for herself a place in the European worid such as she had never held before, and to go on fighting battles of her own where she begaD by fighting the battles of Normandy. It may be that, under other circiunstances and by other means, we might have kept or won back our old laws and freedom, that we might even have kept them, as we have kept them, in a purer form than they have been kept or won back by any kindred nation. It may be that, under other circumstances and by other means, England might have come to fill the place in Europe which she filled under Henry the Fifth and under Elizabeth, under Cromwell and under Chatham. But, as a matter of fact, the course of our history at home and abroad, for the last eight hundred years, has been the direct result of the fact that our Crown was claimed and won by a foreign prince, who gave himself out as the lawful heir of Eng- land, but who had to cut his way to the English throne by the help of the swords of strangers. The immediate results of the Conquest will thus fall into two great heads, of which the second will claim by far the larger share of our attention. The first is the effects of the Conquest upon the position of England as a power in the face of the world. The second is the ^ effects which the same event had on the internal state of the country, on ; : its written laws, on the system of their administration, on the relations ; of the various powers of the state and of the various ranks of society. ' With all these I shall attempt to deal in the present Chapter. Some points of special interest, as the effects of the Conquest on lan- guage and on architecture, I shall keep for notice in separate Chapters. § I. Effects of the Norman Conquest on the External Relations of England, Up to the time of the Norman Conquest the isle of Britain still kept up in some measure its old character of another world distinct from the continental or Roman world.' Alone among the lands * See vol. i, pp. 90, 379. EARL Y ISOLA TION OF BRITAIN, 229 which had ever formed part of the Roman dominion, Britain had beheld the rise of a Teutonic power which inherited no share in the traditions or the civilization of Rome. Alone among the Teutonic setders i^ithin the bounds of the elder Empire, the English had received their Christianity, not before their settlement, not during the progress of their settlement, but by a fresh and special mission from the general centre of Western Christendom after their settlement had been fully made. English kingship was thus something which arose altogether independently of the Empire, and beyond its bounds. No King of Angles or Saxons ruled, even in name, by an Imperial commission; none bore the title of Consul or Patrician of the ancient commonwealth. When English Kings took up Roman or Byzantine titles, they took up the Imperial titles themselves, as chiefs of a separate Empire, alongside of the Empire of the Western and of the Eastern Rome. No Church was more distinctly the child of the local Roman Church than the English Church; but, for that very reason, the English Church kept more of distinctness and independ- ence than any other. While the other Western Churches might pass, sometimes for parts of the Roman Church, sometimes for its subjects, the Church of England kept the position, dutiful but not servile, of a child who has reached full age, and who no longer forms part of his father's household. To these special circumstances of our history we must add the natural effects of our position as an island. The same causes which had once made Britain fruitful in tyrants, which, while Britain was still a Roman province, had enabled Carausius and Maximus to hold it apart from the body of the Empire,* gave further strength to the other causes which tended to give our island a separate being apart from the common body of Western Christendom. Add to this again that the isle of Britain was not occupied by one nation or ruled by one sovereign. The relations between the various English settlements and their British and Scottish neighbours were enough to occupy the minds of Kings and people ; they were enough to make Britain a world of itself, with its own politics, its own wars, neither influencing nor influenced by the wars and the politics of the continent. From all these causes it came to pass that Britain remained for ages insular beyond the other great islands of Europe, insular as Cyprus and Crete and Sicily could never be. It was an island world, a separate Empire, a separate Church, beyond the bounds of the Empire and the Church of either Rome. Its intercourse with other lands, either for war or peace, had been rare and slight in all ages. If the hand of the Great Charles had not been wholly unfelt within its bounds,' it had been less felt than in any other European land which had heard his name. The chief form of intercourse that England had » See Fol. i. p. 90. * lb. p. 379. 230 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN" CONQUEST, had with other lands was of a kind which served, not to connect it more closely with the general Roman body, but to cut it oflf more completely from it. For two centuries the chief attention of England was fixed on the great struggle with the Danish invaders. Whether as conquered or as conquerors, the English Kings and the English people had enough to do in their own island. The final, though momentary, result cf that long struggle was of a kind which bound her more closely to one part of the continent than she had ever been bound before, but it was to a part of the continent a connexion with which by no means strengthened any connexion with the general body of the Western world. Under Cnut, England became for a moment the seat of a Northern Empire, an Empire of islands and peninsulas, which in extent and power might almost rival the Empire of the mainland. She became the head, the elder sister, of all the lands, Teutonic and Celtic, which had accepted the religion of Rome, but which had either thrown off or never submitted to her temporal dominion. Had the dominion of Cnut lasted. Northern Europe would have balanced Eastern and Western, and Winchester woi^d have ranked among the cities of the earth alongside the Rome of Romulus and the Rome of Constantine. Such an Empire would not have been cut off from intercourse with the elder Empires ; but the intercourse which it held with them would have been of quite another kind from that which brought the states of Western Europe together either for war or for peace. The dominion of the great Dane was not, and could not be, lasting; but, had it lasted, it might have seemed no more than the natural carrying out of tendencies which had been at work for ages. Yet before Cnut died or reigned, the seed of the change which was actually to take place had been already sown. England never wholly lost her insular character; she never was wholly cut oflf from her brotherhood with the kindred nations of the mainland ; yet one of the main effects of the Conquest was to bring her into a far nearer connexion than before with the nations of the Romance speech. Here too, as in everything else, the Conquest did but strengthen tendencies which were already at work. Whether we count it really for a cause, or simply as a sign of causes which had aheady been brought into play, the marriage of Emma marks the first stage in the change which was wrought out by the arms of her great-nephew. It was on his descent from her that William rested tus strange claim to the English Crown by descent or nearness of kin.* This was indeed a result which no man in the days of jEthelred could have foreseen, yet, even at the time, the Norman marriage might have been marked as the beginning of a new sera. The marriage of iEthelred * See vol. i. p. 204. INFLUENCE OF EMMA AND EADWARD, 23I and Emma led directly to the Norman education of their son, and to all the Norman tendencies which distinguished his reign. We have seen that the promotion of strangers, the building of castles, the closer connexion with the Roman see, all the points which distinguish England after the Norman Conquest from England before it, began in the reign of Eadward, and simply bore their full fruit under William. The English spirit of Godwine and Harold checked the foreign influence for a time ; but even they could not wholly root it ou4* Cheerless as was the counsel which Robert the son of Wymarc gave to William on his landing,* yet the fact that there was a Norman, high in wealth and office, ready to give him any kind of greeting on his landing, was a sign that the work of the reign of William had already begun in the reign of Eadward. But while, in other respects, the actual Conquest did but carry out more fully the system which Eadward began and which Godwine and Harold had checked, one form which die new state of things took was wholly unknown before William's day. In his day, for the first time, English troops began to make war on the continent in quarrels not their own. If, in the days of ^thelstan and Eadmund, English fleets had shown themselves in the Channel as allies in Gaulish warfare, it had been to assert the rights of a prince who might almost have passed for an Englishman. If, in the days of -fithelred, English troops had landed in the C6tentin, it was to avenge the help which Normandy had given to the invaders of England." During the reign of Eadward warlike operations beyond our own island were twice proposed and once decreed. But both times all that was thought of was action by sea, and in both cases the friend to be helped and the enemy to be withstood were both of kindred race. Help was refused to Swegen of Denmark against Harold of Norway,' and help was decreed to Henry of Germany against Baldwin of Flanders.* But it does not seem to have come into the mind of any man in England, not even into the mind of the Normannized King himself, to give help to Eadward's Norman friend and cousin, either against his rebels at Val-^s-dunes or against his invading over-lord at Varaville. Strangely enough, the first thought of any interference of England in the internal politics of Gaul, the thought of seeking for French or Angevin allies, seems to have been the thought of Harold and not of Eadward.** But here again we have only a link in the same chain. If Harold dreamed of seeking friends at Paris or Angers, he sought them only to form a diversion against the threatening power at Rouen, a power which, but for Etoma and her son, could never have cherished the thought of threatening England. But, as soon as the Duke of the » Sec rol. Hi. p. 276. * Sec vol. i. p. 203. * See vol. ii. p. 60. « See voL ii. p. 64. ■ Sec vol. ii. p. 287 ; vol. iii. p. 1 21. 232 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. Normans became also the King of the English, the blood of Englishmen began to be shed in quarrels purely Nonnan. We have seen Maine won for William by Englishmen, fighting perhaps under the command of Hereward himselfJ We have seen William's life saved from his rebellious son by the gallant devotion of Tokig of Wallingford before the walls of Gerberoi.' But when Englishmen were once carried beyond sea to fight in the quarrels of others, they soon began to make the quarrels of others their own. The national spirit revived ; it found for itself a new field, when Normandy was won by the arms of Englishmen for a King of English birth. And when Englishmen once began to fight in the old quarrel between Normandy and France, they soon changed that local quarrel into an abiding national enmity between France and England. Under the Conqueror England begins to play a part in continental quarrels. But it plays a part only as an appendage to a continental duchy, sending its sons to fight in a purely Norman quarrel at the bidding of a purely Norman master. Under the English-bom Henry this state of things grows into another. England, no longer an appendage to Nor- mandy, but the conqueror of Normandy, appears upon the general scene of European politics as the enemy of France and the ally of Germany. Something of a foreshadowing of those relations had been seen when Otto and Eadmund both stepped in to support the rights of Lewis of Laon against Hugh of Paris. But when the two Henries are joined together against the Parisian King, we have the very state of things which Europe has since seen so many times repeated, from the day of overthrow at Bouvines to the day of victory at Waterloo. As a direct result of her conquest by the Norman, as a direct result of her acting for a moment as an appendage to a continental duchy, England stands forth under her own Henry, no longer as the island world of her former being, but as one of the great kingdoms of the European world, as one of the great members of the Western commonwealth. And, strange to say, her Conquest by men of Romance speech was the cause that, when, for the first time, she shows herself before the world in that new character, it was to play her part as the foe of the Romance-speaking King, as the friend of the Teutonic Emperor. Under Henry the First then we may fairly say, not only that the King of the English was one of the chief potentates of Europe, but that England was one of the chief states of Europe. The Norman Conquest had given to the island kingdom a kind of greatness which had never belonged to it before. England had been drawn into the general European world as an appendage to Normandy ; but, from the day of Tinchebrai, we must count Normandy as an appendage to ^ Sec vol. iv. pp. 329, 378. ^ Sec voL iv. pp. ^40, 497. ENGLAND UNDER THE HENRIES. 233 England, and look on England as holding her European position in her own right Then came the time of anarchy; then came the accession of the Angevin dynasty. England, as part of the vast dominions of Henry the Second, might seem to lose somewhat of her relative importance. She was no longer, as she had, been under Henry the First, incomparably greater than the whole continental possessions of her King. But she was still his greatest possession.^ The continental dominion of Henry was not a single united kingdom, joined together under one immediate government, and whose inhabitants were bound together by a common national feeling. Instead of this, he ruled over an imconnected group of duchies and countries, widely differing in blood, language, and manners, bound together by nothing but their allegiance to a common prince. If England was not greater than all Henry's continental possessions put together, it was certainly far greater than any one of them taken by itself. England was to Henry the Second very much what Castile was to Charles the Fifth. In either case the European position of the cosmopolitan sovereign depended largely upon his other dominions ; but it was the strength of the insular or peninsular kingdom which enabled him to keep his hold on his distant possessions, and thus to maintain his European position. Add to this that mere titles go for somewhat; the power and fame and victories of a prince who holds many possessions by different titles will always go largely to the credit of that one among his possessions which gives him his highest title. This is clearly the rule, except when the title highest in rank is a mere shadow, or when it is drawn from a part of his dominions which is manifestly secondary. Thus the princes of Savoy played no small part in the world, while their highest title was taken, first from the purely imaginary kingdom of Jerusalem, and secondly from the least valuable part of their dominions, the island of Sardinia, But the adv'ance of the Savoyard power certainly did not go to the credit either of the kingdom of Jerusalem or of the kingdom of Sardinia Had Victor Amadeus kept the crown of Sicily, things might have been different. So again, as long as Charles the Fifth reigned, the majesty of the Empire overshadowed the real power of Spain ; but, when his hereditary dominions passed to his son, it became plain that it was not the Roman Emperor, not even the German King, but the King of Castile and Aragon, who had really reigned over the Nether- lands, Milan, and the Sicilies. But in Henry's case, though so large a part of his dominions was continental, though so large a part of his policy was continental, yet it was the insular kingdom, owning no superior upon earth, which gave him a place in men's eyes which * Will. Neub. ii. 32. "Rex Angloram sibi fines snos transmarinos periclitari qoam seuior [Henriciu secandns ic.], malens regnum." 234 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN^ CONQUEST. could never have been held by a mere vassal. The Burgundian Dukes of the house of Valois, every rood of whose dominions vas held of one or other of their two over-lords, could not, mighty as they were, claim the same position as our Angevin Kings. Under Henry the Second .the fame and greatness of her King went to the credit of England ; and this came out still more strongly when, in the days of his son, the crusading exploits of Richard spread the fame of England to the ends of the earth. Richard was indeed bom in England; but he had not in him a particle either of English or of Norman feding. Yet the mingled host which he led to the East passed in the eyes rf other nations for an English host. The name of England became great in Sicily, in Cyprus, and in Palestine. Add to this that the power of Henry the Second was largely extended in another way which really added to the fame and dignity, if not to the strength, of England. No King of the English before him had ever so truly been Emperor of the lands beyond the sea. But, though the great homage of the Scottish King was done on Norman ground, it was the fruit of ^ victory won on English ground, and it was done, not to the successor of Rolf, but to the successor of iEthelstan. So again, the mixed multi- tude which set forth in the days of Henry to win for themselves lands in Ireland were men who set forth to fight rather for their own hands than on behalf of any prince or any nation. But it was from England that they set forth. It was the King of the English, not the Duke of the Normans, who received the submission of the Irish princes ; and, if Heniy or his successors drew any strength or any credit from their dealings with Ireland, it was in their English, not in their continental, character that they drew it. In all these ways, the general position of England grew under the Angevin Kings ; it grew even by the extent of that continental power which seemed almost to overshadow it Of the vast dominion of Henry, England was at once the head and the centre. It was not the Duke of Normandy or Aquitaine who reigned in England, but the King of the English who reigned from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. England was thus, through a variety of causes, all of which had their root in the Conquest wrought by William, placed in quite another position in the eyes of the world from any that she had e\*cr held under her native Kings. And she was so firmly placed in it that she could still keep it, even after, the immediate causes which had placed her in it had passed away. It was through her relations widi Normandy that England had first become a chief actor on the general scene of European affairs. But it soon appeared that her relations with Normandy had been merely the accidental cause which had drawn her forth, and that she was quite able to keep her place, even after her relations with Normandy had come to an end. The loss of Normandy under John had its effects on the posidon of England SCOTL.LXD, XOKMAXJ^]\ .WD Ai^l'/TAIXE. 23;, ^vilhln and without. Within, it gave the finishing stroke to the pro- cess of fusion between Normans and EngUsh. It made all the men of the English kingdom feel themselves henceforth Englishmen and nothing else. Wifliout, it had an effect of exactly the same kind. The English Kings still kept large continental possessions ; but from that time it was plain that they held them as English Kings. The parts of their continental dominions which the English Kings kept were exactly those which were furthest off, and which had least in common with either their English or their Norman dominions. They no longer reigned on the Seine and the Loire ; but they still kept castles in the Pyrenees and cities on the Adour and the Garonne. Now, whatever remembrances of the time when Normandy had con- quered England might still linger in Norman breasts on either side of the Channel, no man could say that Aquitaine had ever conquered England.^ Neither had England ever conquered Aquitaine; but England and Aquitaine fell into the position which is natural when two countries of very unequal power are united under a common prince. Aquitaine became a dependency of England, an unwilling dependency, if we look to one class of its inhabitants, a most willing dependency, if we look to another. Bourdeaux and Bayonne well knew their interest in cleaving to the cause of the more distant master. But the land was still a dependency. It was a possession, not of a native D^ke, not of a Norman or Angevin prince, not of the master oi a cosmopolitan empire, but simply of a Kmg of England. Hence- forth all our continental wars are distinctly and purely English wars, nrars waged to maintain the real or supposed power and honour of England. When Aquitaine is lost and won again — when Edward the Third wins, and when Mary k)ses, Calais — when Henry the Fifth not only wins back Rouen, but holds sway in Paris itself — when, last of all, Henry the Eighth makes our latest conquest of Boulogne — at all these stages the strife is purely English. It is a quarrel which the Englishman had inherited from the Norman, but it is a quarrel which he had long learned to look on as his own. Normandy taught Engknd to become a continental power; she taught her to become the special rival of France; and, having done this, she gave up as it were her own separate being* and herself sank into a French province. Such was the course which our history has actually taken. It is perhaps vain to guess what course it might have taken, had the light- armed English on Senlac faithfully obeyed the orders of theu* King. Yet we can hardly keep ourselves from the thought that, had the * Vet fee the wonderiiil entry in the vali praelio pugnavenint, eosque victos suo ^Qaa.les Ahabenses (Pertz, xx. 8 1 7) ; ** Hac doniinio subjugaverunt." '^^tc Aqnitani cam Aoglo-Saxooicis na- 236 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST Norman Conquest never happened, our European position coold hardly have been what it actually has been. If England and Gaol had never been brought into that close communion which the Nor- man Conquest brought about, we may conceive that we should have held a place in Europe, higher doubtless in degree, but essentiaDj the same kind, as that which has been held by our kinsmen of the Scandinavian North. Our geographical position would have hanfij allowed us to remain so thoroughly a world of our owti, so thoroi^^ cut off from the general course of European politics, as even Denmark, and, still more, Sweden and Norway have commonly been. We may compare our great days of continental prowess in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the passing splendours of Swedish victoiy under Gustavus Adolphus and Charles the Twelfth. There is indeed the difference that, in the latter case, the chronological order of the wise conqueror and the mere knight-errant is reversed. Henry the Fifth may stand beside Gustavus, while Edward the Third, when his trappings of chivalry are torn aside, can hardly ask for a higher place than Charles the Twelfth. But the English conquerors at leaa appeared some centuries earlier than their Swedish followers, and those days of exceptional and momentary continental conquest are far from making up the whole European career of England. Oar insular position, combined with the career which was fixed for us bf our Norman Conqueror, has given England a special position of bff own in Europe. She can choose, almost at pleasure, in a way in which hardly any other European state can choose, whether she will take a part in the affairs of the continent or stand aloof from than. We can either play the part which our Norman Conqueror opened to us, or we can fall back on the part of the older England of -^thelstan and Eadgar. We can again be the island Empire sur- rounded by its vassal states, vassal states no longer to be looked for in our own group of islands, but in the kingdoms which we have won, the colonies which we have planted, in the lands beyond either Ocean.* In this way the whole later history of England with reference to foreign powers has been affected by causes of which the Norman Conquest was the beginning. 'Alongside of this influence on our political and military history, the same event had also an influence not less marked on our ecclesiastical history. But while, from the political and military side, increased intercourse with the rest of the world meant increased fame and strength, from the ecclesiastical side it meant only further subjection to a foreign power. Through the whole of the four reigns which we have gone through, we have seen the encroachments of the Roman see grow bolder at every step, and * See vol. i. p. 45. QUESTION OF INVESTITURES. 237 ave seen that every stage of encroachment is marked by con- orary writers as an innovation on the ancient laws of England. we have seen how vigorously both the Kings and the clergy of and withstood those several forms of innovation which touched several interests. The two points for which Hildebrand had so »usly striven were both alike innovations on ancient English ice, and both alike were firmly withstood. We have seen that ebrand and his successors never ventured to suggest to either am that he should give up the ancient custom of his predecessors hich the Bishop and the Abbot received their staves from the \. Few things in our whole story are more remarkable than this silence of the great Pontiff. The right of investiture was the t point of strife between the Papacy and the Empire ; but not word is breathed against the exercise by the King of the Eng- 3f the very power which is so loudly denounced in the Emperor, jory makes other demands on William, demands some of which efused ; he even calls on him, though vainly, to do homage for Town ; ^ but no hint is given that William brings on himself any by a practice which was deemed so guilty in Henry. Gregory : have deemed that, of the two things, William was more likely ive up the external dignity of his Crown than to give up the cise of its ancient rights within his kingdom. The one sacrifice iked for, but in vain; the other is not even asked for. The tion of investitures never troubled the mind either of the politic franc or of the saintly Wulfstan. The investiture of the Bishop ac King forms the very life and soul of the most famous of the ads which have gathered round Wulfstan's name.^ The question X troubled the mind of Anselm, till, in his foreign sojourn, he led that the ancient law of England was proscribed by the decrees , continental Council' At last the question was settled by the \ policy of Henry, who gave up the outward ceremony, knowing all that it really implied still remained his own. Now that the nuity of Randolf Flambard had found out that Bishops and ots were the military tenants of the King, bound to do homage m for their temporal benefices, the King could afford to give up ceremony which to tender consciences looked like a claim to ow the spiritual office. In truth Henry gained more by this promise than he lost. StiU, as a matter of form, it must be set n as a step in the advance of the power of Rome in England, n the use which the holy Eadward had freely practised was given, n deference to rules laid down by an Italian Council, ut the advance of the Roman power was also marked in more * See vol. iv. p. 393. * See vol. iv. pp. 356, 257. Cf. Ginldos, Spec. Ecd. iv. 34. * Sec above, p. 95. 238 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST practical ways. From the accession of William onwards, applications to Rome, and visits of Legates from Rome, become more and more frequent. Questions which in earlier times would have been sctded by the powers of the national Church and State begin, step by stq), to be referred to the judgement of the Roman Pontiff or his represen- tatives. As William had craved the blessing of Rome on his ente- prise, so, on one solemn day at least he received his Crown at the hands of Roman Legates.^ In Eadward's days the Norman Robert was driven from the see of Canterbury by the voice of the Englidi people. In William's days English Stigand was deprived of the same see by the authority of the Roman Pontiff. The Legates come oftener and oftencr; even in Henry's reign a simple presbyter, deputed by the Pope of one world, presumed to displace the Pope of the other world in his own church. And we have seen how the only way to avoid such degradation was for the Patriarch of Britain himself to become the representative of his Roman brother.' If these things were done under Henry, it is not wonderful that wc find Stephen stooping to ask for a papal confirmation of his election to the Crown," or that, throughout the troubles of his reign, the Legate of the Holy See, whether a stranger or an English prelate, holds a place of marked superiority among the temporal and spiritual chiefs of the kingdom. In the Councils which the Legates hold we find the practice of appealing to a foreign court at once fast gaining ground and censured as a novelty by the English writers of the time.* At last we see the right to the Cro\^Ti of England solenmly discussed before the papal tribunal,* and the Bishops of England are forbidden by the Pope to take any part in the coronation of the son of their King.' Such a coronation might indeed be taken as a breach of the right of the English nation to a free choice at the next vacancy of the Crown ; but it is hard to see how the Roman Bishop could have any interest in the matter. In all these different ways the power of the Roman see over our island was strengthened ; the state of things thus grew up which called forth the first resistance of the second Henry and the more effectual action of the Eighth. Another sphere of action which was opened to England by the Norman Conquest partakes both of the military and of the religioi^ character, and it has been already incidentally glanced at The first Crusade was in truth that which William himself led against Eng- land.^ In the worthier Crusades against the Infidel which followed, England held no mean place. But we may be sure that it was mainly owing to the infusion of the Norman spirit of adventure that * See vol. iv. p. aao. 'See above, p. 157. * See above, p. 165. * Sec above, p. 210. * See above, p. a 1 8. • See above, p. a 18. '' See vol. Hi. p. 315. THE CRUSADES, 239 England came to take the share in them which she did. The Eng- lishman, left to himself, was valiant in defending his own shores ; he was ready to go on errands of devotion or charity to Rome, to Jerusalem, or even to India. When driven from his own land, he was ready to take service under a distant master, and to fight for the Eastern Caesar as valiantly as he could have fought for a King of the house of Cerdic or of Godwine. But we may doubt whether the thought of combining warfare and devotion, the thought of going forth on an armed pilgrimage, would ever have come, without prompting from outside, into the mind either of -Alfred or of Harold. We may judge of ourselves in this matter by the part which actually was played by our Scandinavian kinsfolk. They had their share in the Crusades ; but it was by no means a leading share. The expeditions of Sigurd the Crusader in Spain and in Palestine stand almost alone ; and his brother Eystein thought that he himself did more wisely by staying at home and working for the good of his own people.* Otherwise we might have looked for the countrymen of Harold Hardrada to bear the foremost share in enterprises in those regions of the world which had beheld his most famous exploits. The same change which came over the English some centuries before, seems now to have come over the Northmen. A few generations were enough to turn the Angles and Saxons, in their new world of Britain, into a people who had small thought of war or policy beyond that world. In the like sort, the Scandinavian nations seem, about this time, to have lost their spirit of distant enterprise, and to have confined their policy and waufare within the bounds of Northern Europe. If then Scandi- navia took but a small share in the Crusades, we may doubt whether England, left to herself, even with her greater geographical advantages, would have taken a much greater share. From what part of Europe the crusading impulse really came, we see by the name which all the nations of Western Europe have ever since borne on Eastern lips. From those days till ours they have always been the Franks, Franks of course in the sense which the word Franci bore at Paris, not in that which it bore at Aachen. And among such Franks the Normans held a foremost place ; one Norman indeed, the old Roger of Toesny, had waged a private crusade against the Saracens of Spain before Pope Urban had summoned all Christendom for the deliverance of Palestine.* The Norman brought the crusading spirit with him into England, he bequeathed it to his English-bom descendants, he even taught it to Englishmen in the stricter sense, to the race whom he had conquered. In this way again England was drawn by the Conquest into the same general current as the other nations of Europe, and a large share of the dangers and the glories of the Holy Wars were borne ' See their disconnc in Laing, iii. 178, 179. 'See voU i. pp. 310, 311. 240 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE SORMAN CONQUEST. by men who were English by blood or birth. The list of English crasadcrs begins with a company strangely grouped and strangely named. We have seen that the call to the first Crusade was obeyed by the foreign-born -fitheling Eadgar,^ by the English traitor Ralph of Wader,- and by one worthier than they, but whose name still speaks of Norman influences, the martyr Robert son of Godwine.' Against the glory of one English Robert we must indeed set the infamy of another English Robert from the same shire, the renegade Robert of Saint Alban's, whom we hear of as passing to the service of Saladin and insulting the Christian defenders of Jerusalem in the last moment of their agony.* But all stains are wiped out by the last name on the list of Englishmen who did battle in the Holy Land. That list docs not end till England had again a King bearing an English name and speaking the English tongue. It ends when Sir Edward of England, soon to be the greatest of her Kings^ chose neither the tongue of his Angevin fathers nor that of his Proven9al mother, but the native speech of his own kingdom, as the tongue which his interpreters were bidden to expound to the ambassadors of the unbelieving Soldan.* Another point of increased intercourse with foreign lands was an almost necessary consequence of the accession of a foreign dynasty. We have seen how rare it was in the older time for an English King, iEtheling, or Ealdorman to seek a wife beyond the bounds of the Teutonic portions of his own island. English Kings had almost always married the daughters either of other English Kings, as long as there were any, or else of the great men of their own kingdom. The foreign marriages of .Ethelberht, of -^thelwulf, and of ^Ethelred aD stand out as exceptions ; and the first and the last of the three led to the two most important results in our whole history since our landing in the isle of Britain." On the other hand, at least since the days of ^-Elfred, the daughters of English Kings had been far more freely given in marriage to foreign princes, Flemish, Saxon, and even French. Still, even these cases may be looked on as exceptional ; if one daughter of Alfred became the remote ancestress of the wife of the Conqueror, another and a greater, the wife of -fithehred the Ealdor- man, had gained midying fame in her own land as the Lady of the * See abofe, p. 6a. his descent. To be **genere AiigHcus** ' See above, p. 62, and vol. iv. p. 401. as well as ^'natione** implies either actual ' See above, p. 62, and Appendix R. Old-English descent, or at least descen! * See Benedict, >. 341. for the account from several generations of foreign settlen. of the treason of " quidani frater Tenipli, * See Walter of Hemingborgh, i. 337. genere et natione Anglicus, Robertus de I shall have to speak of this passage in Sancto Albano." ** Natione *' merely im- the next Chapter. plies a man's birthplace ; ** genere " implies * See vol. L p. 205. JiOYAL AND PRINCELY MARRIAGES, 24! Mercians.^ If the foreign marriages of one daughter of -^thelred had cursed England with the first momentary visit of Eustace of Boulogne and with the longer sojourn of Ralph the Timid, the elder sisters of Godgifu had been given to the Ealdormen of the land, and two of their husbands, the traitor Eadric and the hero Ulfcytel, had marched with their royal brother-in-law to the hill of Assandun.' From the time of the Conquest onwards, the exception becomes the rule ; Eng- lish Kings now, for the most part, seek both wiveg for their sons and husbands for their daughters beyond the limits of their own kingdom. Unless the daughter of Malcolm and Margaret is to count as an Eng- lish subject, no King between Harold and Edward the Fourth, and only one eldest son of a King,' married a wife of English birth. Many pf these foreign marriages l^^ directly or indirectly to political results ; but for Isabel of Angoul6me and Eleanor of Provence there would hardly have been room for the career of £arl Simon. When all traces of foreign origin had passed away from the 'descendants of the Angevin, when, in the houses of York and Tudor, we had again Kings who, if our tyrants, were at least our countrymen, the ancient usage came to life again, and Englishwomen were again deemed worthy to be the wives and mothers of English Kings. Under the Stewart dynasty the foreign fashion set in again, to receive one blow in the marriage which gave us two English Queens in the daughters of James the Second. It was further strengthened, like other foreign fashions, by the coming of the Hanoverian dynasty, till in our own days we have seen another blow dealt to the servile tradition, a tra- dition in which we must see one of the results of the coming of William, but which would have seemed as strange and contemptible to William himself as it would have seemed to iElfred. In all these various ways the effect of the Norman Conquest was to make England a member, and a most important member, of the general European commonwealth. Instead of living a life of her own, as Scandinavia, and to some extent Spain, has done, the island realm has had a more constant influence on general European affairs than either of the peninsular realms. But the result of this change is not confined merely to wars, negotiations, and royal marriages, or to the increased power of the Roman see over England. An increased in- tercourse of every kind with other European lands was an immediate result of the Conquest. Hitherto the commercial dealings of England had been almost whoUy confined to the kindred lands of Germany ' See Tol. i. Appendix F. the modem sense marrying an English- ' SeevoL i. pp. 220, 324, 163, and 433. woman, unless any one chooses to count • The marriage of the Black Prince the son of Henry the Sixth as Prince of with the Fair Maid of Kent is the one Wales at the time of his marriage with case in our history of a Prince of Wales in Anne Neville. YOL. V. R 342 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORM AM CONQUEST »and Flanders. We have seen how, in the old mercantile Institutes of London, though the Norman and the Frenchman were not shut oni, yet it was the " men of the Emperor" whose visits were specially en- couraged, and who were placed almost on a level with the natives of the land.* The Norman Conquest, followed by the accession of the Angevin dynasty, in no way discouraged the German trade, while it still further quickened the Flemish trade, and opened all the pons of Gaul to constant intercourse with England. It must have made a vast change in the commerce of Western Europe when the mouths of the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne were in the hands of the same prince as the mouths of the Thames, the Severn, and the Humto. One most important result of the military conquest of England was the way in which it opened the pjfh for peaceful settlement in Eng- land. The merchant towns — London above all — ^became the seats of a large foreign population, chiefly from Normandy and the other French-speaking lands. The commerce both of London and York with the German and Flemish lands still went on and increased in ac- tivity.^ But the natural kinsfolk of Englishmen had not the same in- fluence on the English merchant towns as the peaceful kinsfolk of the Conqueror. The German Hansa of London flourished, but it flourished as a foreign settlement; the Norman settlers in the city became a large and important element among the civic inhabitants, London contained, not only Norman merchants, not only Norman lords holding franchises within the city walls, but Norman settlers, as it would seem, with small independent fortunes and of a peaceful turn of mind. In Gilbert Becket we see tlie type of the Norman citizen, neither merchant nor feudal lord.* There must have been many others of his class, chiefly no doubt in London, but to some extent in other cities also. The effect of the Norman Conquest in bringing about a closer and busier intercourse between England and other European lands showed itself in another way besides the settlement in England of whole classes of men, like the foreign land-owners and the foreign citizens. England was thrown open to individual settlers of every class, and we are bound to say that foreign lands were in return thrown open to Englishmen. Among the clerical and learned classes, two classes almost, but not quite, the same, the boundaries of kingdoms and nations were almost forgotten froni one end of Western £m-ope to ^ See voL i. p. 190. viventes.** But the anonymous Lambeth • See Appendix GG. writer (Giles, ii. 73) calls Gilbert Becket • So William Fitz-Stephen (Giles, i. " in commerciorum cxercitio vir industrius." 183) distinctly affirms. The parents of He speaks of the number of citizens of Thomas were '* cives Londonise medtastini, Rouen and Caen who came to London neque foenerantcs, neque officiose negoti- and settled in London for purposes ot antes, sed de reditibus suis honorifice trade. PROMOTION OF ENGLISHMEN ABROAD, 243 another. Gerks and scholars freely passed from the dominions of one prince to those of another, sojourning, receiving preferment, keeping up correspondence of various kinds both in their own and in foreign lands. Into this international society England was now freely admitted. To some extent this was merely a revival of an earlier state of things. In the days of the Prankish Kings and Emperors, English missionaries and English scholars had been freely welcomed on the continent, and continental scholars had been freely welcomed in England. But the days of Wilfrith and Ealhwine, of Grimbald and John the Old-Saxon, had passed away. Their only trace for a long time before the Conquest was that promotion of German, and especially Lotharingian, churchmen which began under Cnut, and went on when Godwine and Harold acted in the name of Eadward.* But now, not only were English offices, temporal and spiritual, bestowed on foreigners as a part of the immediate process of Conquest, but men of all nations, chiefly of course of the French-speaking nations, pressed into England. Nor did they always come merely to seek preferment for themselves ; some came on errands which were really to the advantage of the land which they came to. We can hardly judge of that free opening of preferment in one land to natives of another which made Maurilius at home in Normandy, which made Lanfranc and Anselm at home both in Normandy and in England, and which, if it found room for strangers in England, also found room for Englishmen in strange lands. It was in this age that, for once in the history of the Roman see, the chair of Peter was filled by an Englishman, an Englishman certainly by birth, and, by the way in which he is spoken of, most likely also an Englishman by blood.' While Nicolas Breakspear of Saint Alban's was winning his way to the papal throne, other Englishmen were holding high offices in the Norman kingdom of Sicily.' We are again met by the standing difficulty whether the Englishmen so spoken of were Englishmen by blood as well as by birth. But, even if they were the sons of Norman settlers, they were looked on as Englishmen in foreign lands, and they thus give us another witness to the fusion of the two races. It is yet more striking when we find one who can hardly fail to have been an Englishman by blood as well as by birth, seated on a Norman episcopal throne, on the throne of that very Geoffrey of Mowbray who had had * See Tol. ii. pp. 5a, 53. Baronius, instead of " Anglica " reads • In the Lives of the Popes (Muratori, " Graca.** See further references to the iii.440, 441), Nicolas, afterwards Hadrian, English birth of Nicolas in William of it spoken of as **uatione Anglicus de Newburgh, ii. 6; John of Salisbury, castro Sancti Albani," and it is added that Polycraticus, viii. 13 (vol. iv. p. 367, he was ^ pauper deriois, sive clericus Giles) ; Matthew Paris, Wats, 9 a ; and pauperculus.** He was " in AnglicA et Gest. Abb. i. 1 1 a. Latina lingu& peritus ; " so at least it 'See Stubbs, Constitntional History, i. stands in Muratori ; Lingard quoting from 350. ^ R a 244 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. so great a share in the spoils of England. Algarius, Bishop of Coutances, who sat for sixteen years in the days of Stephen, can hardly have been anything but an English JElfgar.' The constant use of the Latin language, strengthened by the wide range of the French language, spoken as it now was from Dunfermline to Jerusalem, had made men of learning almost forget their personal nationality, and feel themselves members of one great commonwealth spread over all Western Europe. This was, as far as we are con- cerned, one result of the Norman Conquest. It is a more amiable form of the process which ^ad once quartered on us Thurstan of Glastonbury and Paul of Saint Alban's, a process which we see has another side, when our John of Salisbury goes to fill the chair of Fulbert and Ivo at Chartres. It is to the strangers who found their way into England, when the barriers of blood and language were thus broken down, that we owe, as we have seen, the first beginnings of our Universities, when the Breton Robert revived the study of divinity, and the Italian Vacarius brought in the study of the civil law.* And the bright side of the new state of things is shown in all its fulness when our Angevin King sends beyond the bounds both of his kingdom and his duchies, beyond the dominions of his over-lord and his fellow vassals, to seek in the Imperial land between the Rhone and the Alps* for the model of every gift which could adorn the Christian pastor in the person of Hugh of Grenoble, of Witham, and of Lincoln. In all these ways we see how the Norman Conquest, partly by its immediate, partly by its more distant effects, gave England an altogether new place in the face of other nations. We have now to go on to see the still more important results which it had upon the constitution, the laws, and the social state of Englishmen in their own land. § 2. The Effects of the Norman Conquest on the Kingly Power. The twofold character of the Norman Conquest, as a foreign invasion clothed under legal forms, is naturally brought out in the strongest colours in the changes to which it led in the position of the King and the nature of his government. I have said often already, but it can hardly be said too often, that King William, the heir of Eadward, the chosen of the English Witan, the consecrated of the ^ See Chronica Normannue, Duchesne, bis opening verses, to let us know from 984 D; Bcssin, Concilia, 531. which of all the Burgundies his hero '* See above, p. 215. came; = See the greater and lesser Life of ** Iniperialis ubi Burgundia surgit in AIpcs Siint Hugh edited by Mr. Dimock. The Et condescendit Rhodaao, couvaliia ver- poet ot the metrical Life takes care, in nant." POIVER OF THE KING IN ENGLAND, 245 Primate Ealdred, the King to whom all the great men of England swore oaths and became his men, made no formal claim to any position but that which had been held by the Kings who were before him. Nor in truth had he any temptation to wish for any other position. The lawful powers of an English King were such as, in the hands of such a King as William, might make him more powerful than any ruler within the bounds of Western Christendom. The power of an English King was indeed limited by the law, and it could be exercised only in accordance with the will of the people. But it had always been found that a King who was worthy to reign, a King who was either loved or feared, much more a King who could call forth that mixed feeling of love and fear which our forefathers spoke of as awe,* could always govern as well as reign. Under such a King the will of the people simply confirmed the will of the King. An English King was not like a Byzantine despot ; it never was held in England that the will of the prince had in itself the force of law. But the will of a prince who was wise enough to see that his own interests and the interests of his people were the same, seldom failed to become law by the formal confirmation of his people.* His power lay in the fact Uiat he was still the true Cyning, at once the choice and the leader of the nation; that he still, always in theory, sometimes in practice, gathered his whole people around him to debate on the com- mon weal. Here lay his strength. His powers were limited by law ; but, within the lawful range of his powers, he could demand obedience in every comer of his kingdom. He had not sunk from a real King of the nation into a nominal over-lord of a divided realm. His Earls were still magistrates sent by him, magistrates who met their sovereign and their fellows in the great Gemots of the kingdom ; they were not princes, each sovereign within his own estates, and who never met together in a national assembly of the whole land. The powers which p>assed to William by his election and coronation would have been ill exchanged for a nominal rule over the wider extent of the realm which paid the King of Paris a nominal homage, or even for the loftier majesty which surrounded the Lord of the World himself. William had every reason to be content with the position of the Kings who had gone before him, if only the circumstances in which he found himself would allow him to abide in their position. But the circum^ stances in which he found himself forced another course upon him. He could not abide- in the position of JElfred, or even in the position of Cnut He was driven to be either more or less than -Alfred and Cnut had been. And, with this choice before him, he chose to be more rather than to be less. Unless he was ready to wield the rod which Ealdred had placed in his hands with a strength with which no * Sec above, p. loi, for this phrase as applied both to Henry the Fir^t and Henry the Second. • Sec vol. i. pp. 35, 78. 246 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. earlier King had wielded it, his only choice was to sink from the position of Eadgar or Cnut into that of his own over-lord at Pan& William made up his mind to be a King, and not a mere feudal lord. In so doing, he drew to his Crown a power second only to that of the despots of Byzantium and Cordova ; but, in so doing, he pre- ser\-ed the ancient laws and liberties of England and handed them on as an heritage for ever. It shows how utterly the history of law has been misunderstood \n those whose special business it is to understand it, when we see lawyer after lawyer telling the world that William the Conqueror introduced the " Feudal System " into England. Ingenious writers have looked on that great Gem6t of Sahsbury which was held in the year before W'illiam's death as the actual moment when this amazing revolotioD took place. ^ That is to say, they have picked out, as the act by which a Feudal System was introduced in England, the very act by whidb William's far-seeing wisdom took care that no Feudal System ever should grow up in England.* So far as any Feudal S}-stem ever existed an}'where, its principle was that every tenant-in-chief of the Cro>Mi should make himself as nearly a sovereign prince as he could, that his under-tenants should owe allegiance and obedience to their immediate lord only, and not to the royal or Imperial head. The principle of William's legislation was that every man throughout the realm of England should plight his allegiance to his lord the King, and should pay obedience to the laws which were decreed by his lord the King and his Witan. Instead of William introducing a Feudal System into England, instead of consenting to sink from the national King of the whole nation into the personal lord of a few men in the nation, he stopped for ever any tendencies — whether tendencies at work before his coming or tendencies brought in by the circumstances of his coming — which could lower the King of the English to the level of the feudal Kings of the mainland. The tendency of feudalism is to a divided land, with a weak central government, or no central government at all. Everj* such tendency William checked, while he strengthened ever}* tendency which could help him in establishing a strong central government over an united realm. To that end he preserved the ancient laws and institutions, laws and institutions which he had no temptation to sweep away, because they could be ' The notions of lawyers on these aside and no other introdnced in its matters may be seen in the talk of Black- stead, the king«iom was wholly defeoce- stone, bk. ii. c. 4 (vol. ii. p. 48, Ed. less." Prestntly, "The prindpal land- 1809). which is repeated by Stephen (i. owners submitted their lands to the 174) in the year 1853, and by Kerr ^ii. yoke of military tenure*,** and what not. 49) in the year 1857. ^^ ^"^« among One is tempted to refer to Saiut Luke, other curious things, that ** the military zi. 52. constitution of the Saxons being then laid ' See rol. iv. p. 472. WILUAM'S ANTI-FEUDAL LEGISLATION, 347 easily turned into the best instruments for compassing his object. Under the forms of lawful succession, he reigned as a conqueror; under the forms of free institutions, he reigned as a despot In truth the acts of the despot were needed to undo the acts of the conqueror. As conqueror, he brought us to the brink of feudal anarchy ; as despot, he saved us from passing the brink. Of any Feudal System, looked on as a form of government, or rather of no-government, William, instead of being the introducer, was the mightiest and most successful enemy. But the words feudal and feudalism have, in practice at least, two distinct meanings. The so-called Feudal System, that is, the break up of all national unity in a kingdom, undoubtedly grew out of the feudal tenure of land. But the feudal tenure of land does not in itself imply any weakness on the part of the central power. Even if we look merely to the tenure of land, it would be quite untrue to say that William introduced feudalism into England For, on the on^ hand, William did not systematically introduce any new kind of tenures ; and, on the other hand, tendencies in a feudal direction had been busily at work long before his coming. Here again the Conquest merely hastened and completed changes which had already begun. The essence of a feudal tenure is the holding of land by the ^rant of a lord, instead of holding it simply as a member of the commonwealth. The holder of a primitive e^el held his land of no man ; he had no lord ; as a member of the commonwealth, he owed to the King or other chief of the commonwealth such obedience as the law prescribed, but the tie was purely political and not personal. But the man who received a grant of land on condition of any service, military or other- wise, stood to his lord in a relation which was not only political but personal. If to this tenure an act of personal commendation was added, the full feudal relation was created.^ Even the man who received a grant of bookland on such terms as made it practically as much his own as a primitive e^el^ had still received his land as a grant. He owed at least personal gratitude to the grantor ; he was not quite in tlie same position as the man whose land was no grant from any one, but was simply his share of the land which the tribe, as a tribe, had occupied or conquered. In all these ways, as I have shown at the beginning of this work, things in England, as in other parts of Western Europe, were fast tending in a feudal direction before William came into England. His coming gave those tendencies a greatly increased strength. He and his followers came from lands where feudal ideas had made far swifter advances than in England. To the mass of his followers a feudal tenure, a military tenure, must have seemed the natural and universal way of holding land. A primitive iSel^ even * See voL i. p. 6a. 248 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST a grant of bookland not charged with any particular services, must have seemed to ihem something strange and unintelligible. Even to the keen eye of William himself they may well have seemed strange, though a>suredly they did not seem unintelligible. And the great facts of William's reign did everjOhing to strengthen the doctrine thai land should be held of a lord. We have seen that, from the beginning, he dealt with all lay estates in England as land forfeited to the Crown, which the King granted out afresh, whether the grant ^-as to the former owner or to some new grantee. The foreign soldier who received his reward in a grant of English land held that land, as a plain matter of fact and without any legal subtleties, as a personal gift from King William. The Englishman who bought back his land/ or received it back again as alms,^ did not hold it as a gift in exactly the same sense as his Norman neighbour, but it was a royal grant by something more than a mere legal fiction. His land had been, if only for a moment, in the King's hands to be dealt with as the King chose; and the King had chosen to give it back to him, rather than to keep it himself or to give it to anybody else. The lawyers' doctrine that all land must be a grant from the Crox^n is thus accidentaUy an historical truth. It became true by virtue of a single act of Williams reign, which no law-book records, and which most likely no lawyer ever thought of. In this way William became systematically to every land-owner in his realm, what earlier Kings had incidentally been to many of them, a personal grantor as well as a political chief. There was no longer such a thing as an e^/y all was bookland, bookland too held only by the actual gift of the reigning King or by his con- firmation of some earlier gift. And the act of personal homage, the commendation of a man to his lord, an act which, though not im- plied in the grant of land, no doubt always accompanied it, brought every grantee into a strictly feudal relation to his sovereign. The King's Thegns became the King's tenants-in-chief. They had been his tenants-in-chief before ; they remained his Thegns still ; but now the one name gradually displaced the other, not merely because the one name was English and the other name French, but because tHe leading ideas conveyed by the two names now changed places. From henceforth the idea of personal commendation implied in the word Thegn became of less importance than the idea of the tenure of land im- plied in the name tenant-in-chief. The effect of William's confiscations and grants was to bring the tenure of land, the holding of land as a grant from a lord, into a prominence which it had never held before, to make it in short the chief element in the polity of the kingdom. In this way the same reign which most effectually hindered the growth of feudalism in its political aspect, most eflfectually strengthened * S«c above, p. 15, and vol. iv. p. 497. * See above, p. JO. W/LUAM'S GRANTS OF LAND. 249 feudalism as a form of the tenure of land. And, in so doing, it ' strengthened thereby all those peculiar social relations and ideas which gather round such a tenure. As the old Eorls died out before the Thegns,* so the Thegns died out before the new names of knight and gentleman. The circumstances of the reign of William thus gave a great im- pulse to one aspect of feudal ideas; biit it does not appear that he made any direct innovations in the law with regard to the tenure of land. Nothing is more certain than that, from one end of Domesday to the other, there is not a trace of military tenures as they were after- wards understood.* As I have had to point out over and over again, the grantee of William, whether the old owner or a new one, held his land as it had been held in the days of King Eadward. The value of the land might have risen or fallen, and its taxation might have risen or fallen in proportion ; but the Survey gives no sign that any land had been made subject to any burthens of a different kind from those which it had borne in earlier times. That the wox^/eudum or fief is constandy used proves nothing; it accurately described the holding of an land since the general redemption, as it would have accurately described the holding of much land before William's coming. Nor is anything proved by the constant occurrence, not indeed in name but in fact, of that which was afterwards known as subinfeudation. It was in the nature of things that the grantee of a great estate should grant out parts of it again to smaller owners, who would, whatever was their tenure, become his men. In every page of Domesday we hear of the "men" of this or that great land-owner, and the practice of com- mendation is referred to almost as commonly. Still we hear of nothing in Domesday which can be called knight-service or military tenure in the later sense. The old obligations remain. The primaeval duty of military service, due, not to a lord as a lord, but to the state and to the King as its head, went on under King William as it had gone on under King Eadward. It may be looked on as a step in the direction of a military tenure, but it certainly is not military tenure in its full form, when we find certain men or their estates charged with the duty of providing armed men for the defence of the castle of Windsor.* Such a tenure as this is rather the old obligation of the fyrd thrown into a special shape, something like those special forms of military service with which various boroughs were charged in the days of Eadward.* So we may trace the approaches to military tenure in other quarters, and we see the first systematic approach to them in a quarter where at the first glance they seem specially out of place, ' See vol. L p. 60; Comparative Poli- ' Domesday, 151 6. See vol. iv. p. tics. 357, 263. 338, and Appendix HH. * See Appendix HH. ^ See vol. iv. pp. 131, 133, 140. 250 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE XORMAX COXQUEST though a moment's thought will show that it is the very quarter where they were most likely to arise. The first begimiings of strictly mili- tan* tenure are to be seen on the lands of the Church. Archbishop Lanfranc and Abbot Adelelm granted out their lands to knights, and of Lanfranc's grants we both find a record in Domesday and gel some details from other quarters.* The lands of the archbishoprici and of the metropolitan convent had hitherto been held by tenants paying rent in money or kind ; now certain parts of them were granted to knights, who imdertook to discharge the militar}' ser\'ice due fixm the whole of the episcopal and conventual estates. Such an arrange- ment was in itself of the nature of a particular bargain; the obliga- tions of \k\ii fyrd were transferred from a class of men to whom they would be specially irksome to another class who were better fitted to discharge them. This is not knight- ser>-ice in the strictest sense; but it is something which would in a short lime grow into it. There is no ground then for thinking that William directly or systematically introduced any new kind of tenure into the holding of English lands. There is nothing to suggest any such belief, either in the Chronicles of his reign, in the Sur>'ey which is his greatest monument, in the genuine, or even in the spurious, remains of his legislation. The code of la^'s which bears William's name, but which is assuredly none of his enacting, is, in all but a very few points, a mere confirmation of the Old-English lai»*s. And the few (K>ints of innovation have nothing to do >*ith feudal tenures. But, when we come to the reign next but one, we are met by a document which shows us that, within thirteen years after the Conqueror's death, not only the militar}* tenures, but the worst abuses of the military tenures, were in full force in England. The great charter of Henry the First, the groundwork of the greater charter of John, and thereby the ground- work of all later English legislation, is filled with promises to abolish the ver}' same class of abuses which were at last swept away by the famous statute of Charles the Second.^ In that charter the military tenures are taken for granted. What is provided against is their being per\erted, as they had been in the days of Rufus, into engines of oppression. It is assumed that the King lays certain feudal bur- thens on his tenants-in-chief; it is assumed that these tenants-in-chief lay burthens of the same kind on their imder-tenants. The object of the charter is not to abolish the rights of either the higher or the lower lord, but only to insure that those rights should be used with some degree of moderation. The lord's right of marriage, of wardship, of ' OnAdelclm, secvol. iv. p.324; onLan- ' See the Preamble to the statute of franc, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 26a. In I a Car. II. (that is, in sober rrckoiiicg. Domesday.after the lands of the Archbishop, his first year, 1660), Revised Statutes. I follows in p. 4, •* Terra militum ejus." 725. ORIGIN OF THE FEUDAL BURTHENS. 251 relief, the rights under which Englishmen groaned down to the days of our last civil war, are all taken for granted ; the yoke is simply to be lightened in practice. When a tenant-in-chief dies, King Henry will not force his heir to redeem his land as had been done in the days of his brother ; the heir is to be allowed to relieve by a just and lawful relief.' The words are vague ; but they point to a difference between payments extorted at the King's arbitrary will and payments to be settled by some received form of custom or arbitration. More- over there is no reference, as there is in some other parts of the charter, to any earlier and better time, either to the days of the Con- queror or to the days of the Confessor. The relief, in short, as a feudal due, is taken for granted; but it is not spoken of as an ancient custom. It appears as a right which had grown up in the days of Rufus, and which Henry, though not willing wholly to give it up, was willing to make less irksome. The same is the case with the still more vexatious feudal rights of wardship and marriage. Of the feudal right of marriage we have already seen a glimmering in the da>'s of the Conqueror. It is noted that Roger of Hereford gave his sister to Ralph of Wader without the King's leave.* It is plain then that, in the Conqueror's time, the King at least expected to be con- sulted about the marriages of the great men of his kingdom. Under Rufus this claim must have grown into a defined and most oppressive right, a right of which Englishmen complained ages afterwards, the right of the King to constrain his tenants-in-chief, their daughters and widows, to marry against their will, or to pay money for leave to many as they wished. The charter of Henry promises the abolition of all such oppressive practices ; but it asserts the right of the King to be consulted about such matters, and his right to refuse his con- sent in certain specified cases. If any of his tenants wishes to marry his daughter or other kinswoman, he is, according to a Domesday phrase,' to speak with the King. The King claims the right of forbid- ding the marriage, if the proposed bridegroom be the King's enemy; otherwise the father or uncle may marry his daughter or niece to whom he will, and he is not to be made to pay anything for leave to do so. The exception in the case of a proposed marriage with the King's enemy* most likely meets the cases which we have seen in the time of the Conqueror. Roger of Hereford, whom Lanfranc had so often re- proved for his contemplated treasons, was undoubtedly the King's enemy, and it was doubtless on this ground that William forbad the * On reliefs, see Appendix II. sive sororem sive neptim sive cognatam, * Sec vol. iv. p. 390. mecum inde loquatar ; sed ncque ego ' See Appendix L aliqoid de suo pro hac licentia acci- * Stabbs, Select Charters, 97. "Si piam neque defeudam ei qnin cam dct, quis baroQom tcI aliorum hominoxn me- excepto si earn vellet jungere ioimico onim filiam ttiam nuptom tradere Toloerit meo.** 253 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. marriage of his sister with Ralph of Wader. The same reasons which would lead a King to forbid one of his chief nobles to give his daughter or sister in marriage to a suspected traitor, would also lead lum to forbid the marriage of such a noble with the daughter or sister of ^ suspected traitor. But we may believe that an interference which, under the Conqueror, had simply been prompted by reasons of state, had, under Rufus, grown into an established means of extorting money. Henry gives up the oppressive part of his brother's practice, and simply claims to do, as a matter of legal right, what his father had done as a matter of state policy. The charter goes on to provide for the other cases of wardship and marriage. The King claims the right of giving the heiress in marriage ; but he will give her by the advice of his barons.^ This is meant to shut out the practice, after- wards so common, of using the marriage of heiresses as a means for enriching royal favourites, or even of selling their marriages to the highest bidder.^ The childless widow is to have her dowry and right of marriage; and the King will not give her to a husband except according to her own free will.' The like privilege is promised to the widow who is left with children, with the provision that she has lived chastely in her widowhood.* The guardian — the iulor in Scot- tish phrase — of the orphans and their land is to be their mother or some kinsman fit for the trust." Henry next goes on to decree that his tenants-in-chief shall follow his example, that they shall do as they have been done by, that they shall grant to their tenants the same measure of relief which he grants to themselves.' We here get another witness to the way in which the system had already become firmly established. The same oppressive rights which the King had taken on himself to exercise towards his tenants-in-chief, they had themselves begun to exercise towards their under-tenants. Henry's charter promises relief to both classes. Its promises and its decrees strike at the worst evils of tlie military tenures as they existed in Eng- land for ages aftenvards; they are an instance of enlightened and beneficent legislation, which was hindered, either by lack of power or lack of will, from being fully or lastingly carried into effect. But they ' Stubbs, Select Charters, 97. *• Et si secundum vellc suum." mortuo barooe sive alio homine meo filta * lb. "Si vcro axor cam Hberis re> hzres remaHserit, illam dabo consilio manserit, dotem quidem et maritatiooem baronum meonim cum terra sua." habebit, dum corpus suum legitime serra- ' See a crowd of cases where money is vent, et earn non dabo nisi secundum paid to avoid this kind of treatment in velle suum." MadoXf History of the Exchequer, 320 et * lb. •• Et tcrrse et liberorum custos erit seqq. sive uxor sive alius propinquonim qui * Stubbs, Select Charters, 97. " Si justius esse debcat." mortuo viro uxor ejus remanserit et sine • lb. "Et przcipio quod barones mei Hberis fuerit, dotem suam et maritationem similiter se contineant erga filios et fiUas habebit, et earn oon dabo marito nisi vel uxores hominum suorum." THE SYSTEM DEVISED BY FLAMBARD. 253 are none the less a witness, telling us that those same points in the military tenures which were felt as grievances in after times were felt as grievances when the military tenures were themselves some- thing new. And they are none the less a witness to the fact that the military tenures had been fully established and wrought into a systematic shape before the accession of Henry. There is no surer witness to the firm establishment of an institution than that it is thought possible to reform its abuses without abolishing the institution itself. But we have seen that in the days of the Conqueror there was no such elaborate system of tenures, carrying with it such well-defined consequences, as appears in the state of things which the charter of Henry was meant to reform. The in- ference is obvious. The system of military tenures, and the op- pressive consequences which were held to flow from them, were a . work of the days of William Rufus. AVhen we have got thus far, we can hardly fail to follow the lead of the greatest scholar of our times in marking the cr^tion of this new and oppressive system, at all events the putting of it into a legal and formal shape, as the work of a single well-known man.* We can feel little doubt in saying that the man who organized the system of feudal oppression was that same Randolf Flambard whom we have met with as the author of so much evil, and whom a contemporary writer does not scruple to speak of as the dregs of wickedness." The argu- ment seems complete. Flambard is distincdy charged with being the author of certain new and evil customs with regard to spiritual hold- ings ;' it follows, almost as a matter of course, that he was the author of the exactly analogous and eqifally oppressive changes which were brought in at the same time with regard to lay holdings. If then there was anytime when "the Feudal System" could be said to be introduced into England, it was assuredly, not in the days of William the Conqueror, but in the days of William the Red. It would be more accurate to say that, all that we are really concerned wth, that is, not an imaginary " Feudal System," but a system of feudal land-tenures, was not introduced into England at all, but was devised on English ground by the malignant genius of the minister of Rufus. Tendencies which had been at work before the Conquest, and to which the Conquest gave increased strength, were by him pushed to their logical results, and were worked into an harmonious system of oppression. Flambard evidently had the spirit of the lawyer in all its fulness. Whatever we say of his premisses, his conclusions follow from them with a sequence which cannot be gainsayed. Let it be once established that land is held as a fief from the Crown on condition of yielding certain services to the Crown, and the whole of ' Sec Siubb*. Const. Hist i. 298. • Sec the passages quoted by Stubbs, ' See aboTC, p. iii. Const. Hist. i. 299. 254 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST the feudal incidents follow naturally. In the new way of looking at things which lies at the root of the whole change, the King is no longer merely the head of the commonwealth, acting on behalf of the commonwealth. He has become the personal landlord, with certain personal rights over his tenants, of which it is his personal interest to make the most in every way. Military service is due from the fiet whether its holder be lay or spiritual. A time may come when, from any cause, there is no holder of the fief capable of rendering that service. But the lord cannot thereby lose his rights; the fief must therefore pass back into his hands, to be disposed of at his pleasure, till there is a successor able to yield the service which is due. A tenant dies, leaving an heir incapable of yielding the accustomed ser- vice, a daughter or a minor son. The lord cannot lose his accustomed dues; the fief cannot be allowed to pass to a new owner, except according to the lord's will. While the male heir is under age. the land naturally reverts to the lord, who, if he chooses, may keep the temporary possession in his own hands, or may grant or sell it to whom he pleases. The female heir cannot be allowed, by a free choice of a husband, to transfer the fief to a tenant of whom the lord may not approve. Her land and herself must therefore be in the lord's power to dispose of as he will. He may, if he pleases, make a profit of his right, either by taking money from the suitor of the heiress, or by taking it from the heiress herself, as the price of a licence to dispose of herself and her lands as she pleases. So, when a bishoprick or abbey falls vacant, a process of exactly the same kind takes place. According to the old conception of kingship, a bishop- rick or abbey was a great office i0 the commonwealth, which the King, as head of the commonwealth, bestowed by the advice of his wise men. According to the new conception of kingship, such a great spiritual preferment is a fief in the King's gift, charged with senices due to the King as a personal lord. When there is no one to dis- charge such services, that is in the time between the death of one prelate and the appointment of another, the possessions of the benefice go back into the hands of the lord, to be dealt with at his pleasure during the temporary occupation. And, as the appointment of the new prelate re.^ts with the King, the King can make this temporary occupation last as long as he thinks good. The rights of wardship and marriage in the case of lay fees, the right to the possession of a vacant benefice in the case of ecclesiastical fees, all hang together. All are deductions from a single principle, and we can hardly doubt that he who is known to have invented one of them was also the in- ventor of the others. In the same spirit, the herioi of Old-English law was changed into the later relief.* The heriot was a payment due * See Appendix II. DEAUNGS WITH LAY AND ECCLESIASTICAL FIEFS. 255 from the man to his lord ; but it did not imply any break in the hereditary ownership of the estate. Bookland, however it was bur- ihened, passed as freely from a man to his heir as an ancient ^el did. It might be forfeited to the estate by a process of law ; it could not revert to a personal lord. In the new theory of tenure, though land might be granted to a man and his heirs, though the right of the heir to succeed was not disputed, yet it was held that he could not actually succeed till he had put himself into a direct personal relation towards the lord of whom the fief was held. The heir was like a King-elect or a Bishop-elect ; he had the sole right to be put into possession ; but a certain process was needed to put him into possession. He had to receive his fief at his lord's hands, and to undertake the ac- companying obligations to his lord. The new investiture was a favour, which might conceivably be refused or delayed ; and the fiscal ingenuity of Flambard found out that the lord might rightfully demand a price for it. In the case of a lay fee, the exaction of such a price ' was simply oppressive ; in the case of an ecclesiastical fee, it was both oppressive and simoniacal. In the case of an ecclesiastical fee, Henry promises that he will abstain from turning ecclesiastical property into a source of profit in any way. He will neither take possession of the revenues during the vacancy, nor will he take any price from the in- coming prelate. That is to say, the practices introduced by Flam- bard, logical inferences as they were from the feudal principle, were deemed to be sacrilegious. Henry therefore promised wholly to forego those sources of profit. In the case of lay fees, the ecclesi- astical objection did not come in. The rights of relief, of wardship, and of marriage were not given up ; they were simply to be made less oppressive in practice. In short, the feudal theory of land-tenure received a more distinct legal establishment through the modifications contained in Henry's charter. As for the promise to abstain wholly from feudal exactions on ecclesiastical property, the whole course of the history shows that this was a promise which both Henry and his successors found it easier to make than to keep. The Red King had laid down the principle that no man could keep all his promises.^ The promise not to make a profit of ecclesiastical goods was a pro- mise which most Kings found it convenient to put into the class to which the doctrine of Rufus was to apply. The truth seems to be that the result of the confiscations and grants of the Conqueror, and of the way in which the malignant genius of Flambard worked the principle of those confiscations and grants into a systematic shape, was to adopt and to codify one side of the feudal theory. The minister of Rufus laid hold of that side of the theory which tended to strengthen the royal power, and, above all things, to ^ Eadmer, Hist. Not. 14. *'Quis est qui cuncta qiue promittit implere possit?" 256 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. increase the royal profits. In the new theory the King personally stepped into the place of the commonwealth of which he was the head. The reign of the Conqueror finally changed the ancient/p/it- land into Terra Regis} The doctrine was established that the Kiug was the supreme landlord, and that all land was held by his grant And from this doctrine the fiscal skill of Randolf Flambard found out means whereby every transaction which afifected the land thus held of the King could be turned to the profit of the King's cofirera King- ship, in short, is losing its ancient character ; it is passing from an office into a possession. The kingdom is a great estate, out of which all smaller estates are car\ed. As landlord, the King asserts his ri^ to various dues which come to him strictly in his character of land- lord, and which have nothing to do with his character as chief of the commonwealth. Dues of exactly the same kind are exacted by the King's tenants from those to whom, in their character of land- lords, they also have made grants. A network of feudal tenures is thus spread over the whole land. The tenant-in-chief, subject to relief, wardship, and marriage on the part of the Cro^n, and himself exacting the rights of relief, wardship, and marriage from his own under-tenants, is a very different kind of person, either from the immemorial owner of an ancient ^U or even from the holder of an estate in bookland granted by the King \^ith the consent of his Witan, and charged with no burthen§ except the inevitable three. But it was only one side of the feudal principle which it suited the policy of either William to strengthen. The new theory of the tenure of land, and the incidents which were held to arise out of that tenure, filled their purses as landlords rather than as political chiefs. And, in their hands, the theory also strengthened their power. For, as long as the new doctrine was applied only to the mere tenure of land, it tended to the strengthening of the royal power. Against its other side, the side which tended to the weakening of the ro)'al power, our Norman Kings carefully guarded. The Amger, a danger of which other lands supplied no small store of examples, was lest the grantee of the sovereign should himself become a sovereign. William himself, in his character as Duke of the Normans, best showed, of all men living, how small an amount of real power a nominal lord might keep over his vassal. When the tenant-in-chief granted out lands to be held of him by the same tenure by which he held his lands of the King, he was himself getting dangerously like a King. If it had once been understood that the primary allegiance of the under-tenant was due to his immediate lord, England might have split up like France and the Empire. As the feudal doctrine had a tendency to turn sovereignty into possession, so it had also a tendency to turn mere possession into sovereignty. Against this danger William secured his ^ See Tol. i. p. 64. STRENGTHENING OF THE KINGLY POWER, 257 kingdom by the great act of the Gem6t of Salisbury. He had become supreme landlord ; but he would not so become supreme landlord as to cease to be supreme governor. All the men of his realm, to what- ever other lords they might owe service, should be his men first of all; they should owe to him a duty which came before all other duties. The other acts of his reign look the same way. The sparing bestowal of the rank of Earl, the way in which the estates of the great tenants-in-chief were scattered through different parts of the country, the constant holding of the ancient assemblies of the kingdom, were all parts of the same policy. England was to be feudalized, so far as it suited the power and profit of the Crown that it should be feudalized. Every application of feudal doctrines which could be turned to the advantage of the Crown was carefully fostered. Every application of feudal doctrines which could be turned against the Crown was as carefully guarded against. Everything in short, whe- ther in the older or the newer theory of kingship, which tended to exalt the King was pressed into the royal service. The Norman King was to be all that his English predecessor had been, and some- thing more. He was to be, like his predecessors, head of the com- monwealth of England, supreme in all causes and over all persons within the realm of England. He was to be all this in a far fuller sense, and with a far more distinct exercise of personal authority, than any of his predecessors had been. And to these elder sources of power he was to add new sources of power unknown to the Kings who had gone before him. England was to be, not only his king- dom, but his dominion ; its land was to become his land, held of him by men who were his tenants, men to whom he stood in the twofold relation of landlord and of sovereign. And out of the relation of landlord there were to grow, if not under the first William, at least under the second, sources of royal wealth before unheard of. Every death of a lay tenant, every minority, every marriage, every vacancy or appointment to a bishoprick or an abbey, all brought in money to the King, not in his character as chief of the conunonwealth, but in his character of personal landlord. Other lands looked with amaze- ment at the sums which went into, and which, when it was needed, came out of, the hoard of the English King. In earlier days men had wondered at the wealth of England. The wealth of England had now become the wealth of the King who was not only her ruler but her landlord. The kingly power was in this way strengthened by the innovations to which the Conquest gave rise. But it was strengthened fully as much by the conservative side of the Conqueror's policy, by his systematic retention of the old laws and constitution of England. The Norman King had to deal with two classes of subjects, with the VOL. V. s 258 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. English over whom he claimed to rule by legal right, and with the foreign followers whose swords had, in his view of the case, enabled him successfully to assert that l^al right And the Norman Kings soon found that it was far more on the conquered English than on the conquering Normans that they could safely rest the support of their throne. The men to whom they owed their Crown were too powerful to be neglected They had to be rewarded and to be flattered, to be placed in the highest posts in the kingdom, and en- riched with the greatest estates. But they had none the less to be watched and guarded against; it was the native population only wfaicfa could really be trusted. Both William Rufus and Henry the First owed their throne to English loyalty, when the Normans, as a bodr, were arrayed against them. In the first stage of the Conquest, before the Norman settlers had taken firm root in the land, before the poiiqr of Henry had raised up a second class of Norman settlers who were better able to take root in the land,' the English looked to the Nor- man King as their protector against his Norman followers. There was little room for any real attachment between the King and the body of the nation ; but they had distinctly a common interest. And the Conqueror and Henry at least, whatever we say of Rufus, had the wisdom to see this. They might have a sentimental preference ibr the race to which they themselves belonged ; they might even have a feeling of contempt for the nation which their own race had over- thrown ; but they saw that their solid interest lay on the side of the English people. They saw that the surest way to maintain their power was to keep up the old framework of the English kingdom with as litde change as might be. Change, strictly speaking, there was none ; some Norman institutions were set up alongside of some English institutions; and a great part of our later legal history is made up of the way in which these two classes of institutions affected one another. But we cannot say that any English institutions were abolished. The days of King Eadward remained the standard, eveiy departure from which was noticed as a novelty; the law of the land was still the law of King Eadward, with the improvements made bv King William. The kingly power thus drew strength from every quarter. Every j)art of the old s}'stem which gave strength to the Crown was kept up, and only so much of the new system was brought in as could be made to serve the same purpose. The military tenures supplied the King \iith a new kind of army, bound to him as lord and grantor of land. But he in no way gave up his right, as an Enghsfa King, to summon the older army which followed him as chief of the commonwealth. The English ^ir^/ went on alongside of the Norman feudal array, and the King could make use of either or both, as suited * See aboTe, p. 105. THE ASSEMBLIES GO ON, 259 his purpose. In his character of feudal lord, he drew a new source of revenue from the profitable incidents of the feudal tenures ; but he did not give up the older sources of income which belonged to him as chief of the state. Alongside of reliefs and wardships, the Dane- geld was duly levied on every hide of land. The union of the two characters, old and new, native and foreign, gave to the Norman Kings of England a degree of power such as no Kings had held before them in our island, such as was held by no Kings of their own day anyivhere nearer than the lands of the Greek and the Ss^racen, The union in one man of the characters of supreme governor and supreme landlord, founded on an ingenious intertwining of the old principles of English constitutional law with the new doctrines of continental feudalism, placed in the hands of the Norman Kings a power all but Imperial It could not be said that what seemed good to the prince had of itself the force of law ; but it was soon found easy to find a legal sanction for whatever seemed good to the prince. For it was part of the wisdom of our Norman Kings to keep up in their fulness all those parts of our ancient constitution which to less discerning despots might have seemed hindrances to their power, but which they knew how to turn into its instruments. The old Assemblies went on ; and, during the reign of the Conqueror at least, they went on in the old places and at the old seasons. Three times in the year, at Winchester, at Westminster, and at Gloucester, did King William wear his Crown and gather around him the great men of his realm, as King Eadward had done before him.* Before that Assembly he put forth his great schemes of law and of administration, and asked their assent as Alfred and the elder Eadward had done.' Before the great Survey was ordered, the King had mickle thought and very deep speech with his Witan, with that assembly which, from that deep speech, drew, in the stranger tongue, its later name of Parliament, And, on greater occasions still. Assemblies were gathered which needed the open plain of Salisbury to hold them. Assemblies which, however different in spirit, may in mere numbers have been not unlike the Assemblies which voted the restoration of Godwine and the banishment of Nom^an Robert A less clear- sighted ruler might have shrunk from meeting such a joint assembly of the conquerors and the conquered. William knew that it was such gatherings as these which best proved that he was master of con- querors and conquered alike. In so doing, the despotism of William preserved to us our heritage. The spirit of the Assembly, its practical constitution, the practical extent of its powers, have changed from time to time, and never, we may well believe, was so great a change wrought in so smaU a time as that which parted off a Gem6t under William from a Gemot under Harold. 3ut the continuity of our ' See ToL it. p. 423. » lb. p. 468. S 3 26o POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. national Assemblies has never been broken. There has been no time when we have been left without a national Assembly of some kind. This is one of the points which distinguishes the history of England from the history of perhaps every other European kingdom. Every- where else, the ancient national Assemblies have vanished altogether, or have been restored after a while under forms wholly dififerent from those of earlier days. In England, though the nature of our national Assemblies has greatly changed, it has changed step by step ; there has been no pulling down, no rebuilding. That the Witenagemot could change into the great Council, that the great Council could change into the Parliament, without any absolutely new institution ever being set up, is undoubtedly, as I shall try presendy to show more at length, a distinct result of the Norman Conquest. In one of the chief points which touch the position of the King, the change wrought by the Conquest, though sure, was far slower than might have been looked for. The feudal theory which looks on kingship less as an office than as a possession, naturally tends to n^ake the Crown, like any other possession, pass by hereditary descent. If direct heirs fail, it looks with more favour on the appointment of a successor by bequest or adoption, perhaps even by bargain and sale, than on his election by those over whom he is called upon to rule. The old Teutonic kingship^ as we h^ve §n often shown, -was -not hereditary, in the sense of passing acc^r^in^JoanT" ^ definite law of succession. The feelings of the old 4ime respected the kingly stock, the stock ot gods and heroes; but the kingliness was in the whole kin ; one son of Woden was as kingly as another; the nation might call to the duties of actual kingship whichever of the last King's sons or brothers it thought good.* The natural tendency of the Norman Conquest, and of the feudal ideas which came in with it, was to change this reverential preference for the kingly stock into a definite rule of hereditary descent, marked out according to a definite law of succession. Such was its final result ; but it was a result which was very slow in taking place. All the immediate circumstances of the dme were against the carrying out of any regular rule of succession among William's descendants. In no case was the person whom we should now call the heir either the man best fitted for the kingly office or the man who had the best opportunities of taking actual possession of the kingly power. Settlements of the Crown before the vacancy came to nothing in these times, as they had come to nothing in earlier times. The rights of elder birth were set aside by the Conqueror himself, when he made his bequest, if bequest we are to call it, in favour of Rufus. They were equally set aside by the English nation when Robert was a second time passed by in * See ComparatiTc Politics, 164, 187. GROWTH OF THE HEREDITARY DOCTRINE, 261 favour of Henry. Had the -ffitheling William survived his father, hereditary succession would most likely have been firmly estab- lished. But at Henry's death the struggle lay between the obligation of an oath and the right of free election. Neither Stephen nor Matilda could be called the heir according to any known law ; the succession of either of them was quite unlike anything that had ever happened before, either in England or in Normandy. Through all these causes, the new theory had not, for the first hundred years aifter the Conquest, any chance of working out its natural results. At every vacancy of the throne, the circumstances of the moment were unfavourable to the new doctrine of succession, and favourable to the old doctrine of election. Under the Angevins, circumstances became more favourable to hereditary succession, and such succession became, not by law but by prescription, the rule of English kingship. That rule gradually came in through the working of a doctrine which looked on kingship as a private possession ; it has at last become law through a conviction that hereditary succession, with all that may be said against it, is yet the least of several evils. But the nation has never given up its right of choosing its sovereign. The King who, according to modem notions, becomes King the moment the breath is out of the body of the last King, is as much King by the will of the people as the King who was no King till he was formally chosen, crowned, and anointed. The ancient King reigned by virtue of an act of the national Assembly. TTie modem King reigns by virtue of an act of the national Assembly none the less. His one claim to the Crown comes from the terms of an Act of Parliament, an act which, like all other acts, may be repealed by the same authority which decreed it. The Parliament of England has, for some ages, but sparingly exercised its right of personal election. But it has never shmnk from exercising it whenever the circumstances of the time called for such a course.* A national Assembly, all the more national, all the more lawful, because no King's writ had summoned it, did once again exercise that great right when it chose William the Deliverer to complete the cycle which had begun under WiUiara the Conqueror. And, at no nioment before or since, has tfieJBarliament of England ovo'MQ^njil^ its eternal riggt jrLrfg^ilat^"" 2§f TnyftrRijrrpRsi9yi at its will. If we should ever need^achange in the law which mles that succession, it is as easy to change it now as it was in the days of Sigeberht or of JSthelred, of Richard the Second or of Henry the Sixth. Now this power we largely owe, not indeed to the Norman Conquest itself, but to the state of things which immediately followed the Norman Conquest, and which hindered the new theory of kingship from at once bearing its natural fraits. If the Crown of ^ I have gone more full/ into this matter in the Growth of the English Constitution, PP- 40» 147. 262 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. William had passed as easily from father to son as the Crown of Hugh Capet did, kingship might have run the same course in England which it ran in France. The supposed divine right of a single family might have taken such root that it could not have been set aside I7 any form of law. To uproot it might have needed a revolution sucL as that which in France has made all stable government of any kind impossible. Directories, Tyrannies, Restorations, Red RepuUics, and Septennates all come of the unlucky fact that for eight hundred years no successor of Hugh Capet ever lacked a male heir. We have kept our ancient right ; we can at any time change the succession of our Kings ; we can increase or lessen their powers by the same means by which our fathers first called them and their powers into being. And this power we largely owe to three happy accidents which happened within the time with which we are now dealing. Had Robert, instead of Rufus, been the loyal and favoiu-ed son of his father — had he been at Winchester, instead of far beyond the sea, when Rufus fell in the New Forest — had the iEtheling William clung to the mast of the White Ship instead of the butcher of Rouen — had the course of thing[s at any one of those times followed a different path from that which it did follow—the yoke of such a kingship as that of France might have pressed upon us till the reign of law had wholly passed away. We might have been held down by the fetters of an arbitraiy will, till the foundations of all our institutions were undermined, till the power of preserving by reformation had wholly failed us, and had left nothing in its stead but the power of destruction. The main results then of the Norman Conquest, as affecting the kingship of England, were these. The power of the King was largely increased ; his position, and the character of his government, were largely changed; but the change was far more in practice than through any formal enactment. The tendencies in a feudal direction which had been at work before the Conquest were strengthened and hastened by the Conquest. But they were moulded by the hands of men who took care that feudal tendencies should be encouraged so far as they could be turned to the strengthening and enriching of the Crown, that they should be discouraged whenever they could lead to its weakening. After the coming of William, a King of the English remained all that he was before, and he became something else as well. He kept all his old powers, and he gained some new ones ; he kept all his old revenues, and he gained some new ones. He became universal landlord, but in so doing he did not cease to be universal ruler. At once King and lord, he had two strings to his bow at every critical moment ; if one character failed him, he had the other to fall back upon. He could command his subjects' obedience by a twofold right; he could call them to his RELATIONS OF THE CROWN TO THE TWO RACES. 263 standard by a twofold right ; and by a twofold right he could cause their money to flow into that Exchequer which was at once the fiscus of the feudal landlord and the cBrarium of the chief of the common- wealth. The history of the Roman state had shown how the union of all the powers of the commonwealth in a single magistrate was the practical establishment of a tyranny, how the man who was at once Consul, Tribune, and High Pontiff, Imperator of the Army and Prince of the Senate, was found to be, if not a King, yet more than a King. Jn the like sort, the imion of English and Norman ideas in the persons of the Norman Kings of England, the union of every character, Norman or English, which could tend to increase the power of the sovereign, made our Norman Kings the mightiest rulers of their time. The King-Duke wielded the strength of kingdom and duchy in a way which was not within the power either of his royal lord or of his Imperial ally. In a kingdom where men of different and hostile races still dwelled side by side, he was the master of both, because both had need of him. The conquerors could not stand apart from their military chief, their feudal lord, the grantor from whom they held all their lands. The conquered could not stand without the help of him who, though stranger and often oppressor, was still King of the English, King chosen, crowned, and anointed. The King could, as occasion served, play off Normans against Englishmen, and Englishmen against Normans. Rufus and Henry alike owed their Crown to the loyalty of the English people ; how one at least of them requited that loyalty our tale has already told. Still, even in the blackest times, the King was so far the friend of the people that he never was their worst enemy, and was often the enemy of their worst enemies. One t)rrant was at least better than many; not only the iron rule of the Lion of Justice, but even the darkest days of oppres- sion under the Red King, were better than the anarchy of Stephen. Under that anarchy, men learned that the system which had been begun under the great William needed a William or a Henry to carry it out When their rod of rule fell into weaker hands, there was of a truth no King in the land ; every man did that which was right in his own eyes. There was no longer a ruler, either to assert his own rights or to defend the rights of his people. Men cried for a King to save them, and a King came indeed, another Henry not less mighty than the first. But under the Angevin King and his successors a change began to work. Iji the purely Norman time the King had been master alike of Normans and English, because each race needed his help against the other. A King in such a position might well be a despot, when it was the interest of every class of his subjects trf magnify his office. But, step by step, old wrongs and old distinctions were forgotten. Normans and English were fused into one people, or rather men of Norman descent bgrn on English soil were in truth 264 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST, bom Englishmen. Both races hailed the coming of a King who, as far as his formal pedigree went, was at once Norman and English. But both soon felt the practical working of a dynasty which in truth was neither Norman nor English. There w^ere now no longer two hostile races, each of which hailed the royal despotism as a safeguard against enemies at its side. An united nation was now fast springing up, while the royal power had passed away into a house which was foreign to both the older and the newer elements of thatnation. The strong hand of the second Henry could keep together the discordant members of his vast dominion. But, under his son and grandson, the Angevin dynasty stood forth as a foreign dynasty in the face of an united English people. The descendants of the men who fought for William and the descendants of the men who fought for Harold had neither of them any wish to see their lands harried by mercenary Braban9ons^ or to feel themselves put aside on their native shore for hungij favourites from Provence or Angoul^me. The power of the Crown had once been strengthened by the needs of two hostile parts of a divided people ; now it stood forth as a thing of evil in the eyes of an united people. Of that united people those who sprang from the conquerors of a past day had now become simply the first rank. Under ' Henry the First a Barons' War would have meant a war of stranger Barons against King and people. Under Henry the Third a Barons' War meant a war which the people, with native Barons in their fore- front, waged against a foreign-hearted King. Despotism crumbled away, and not anarchy, but lawful freedom came in its place. And why ? Because in the eleventh century, just as in the sixteenth, the forms of law and freedom went on, even when there was least of their substance. The Chronicler complains that, when men spake most of right, they did most of unright. But it was because they still spake of right that right in the end outlived unright. At every stage, whether of oppression or of conflict, the law of England still lived on. The laws of Eadward took a new shape in the charter of Henry. The charter of Henry took a further shape in the greater Charter of John. But at no stage did men ask for new laws ; at every stage they knew that the old were better. No man asked for new rights, for new liberties; the ancient laws gave them rights and liberties enough, if only those ancient laws could be obeyed, as men deemed they had been obeyed in some happier time. The happiness of the good old times is a mere dream in every age ; but to keep on the laws of the old times, in preserving to reform, in reforming to preserve, is the true life of a free people. This we have done, and that we have the power of doing so is largely due to the circumstances of the Conquest, to the personal wisdom of the Conqueror. Under an unbroken native dynasty', the old rights might have died out step by step, as they did in so many of the kindred lands. Under a conqueror of FREEDOM PRESERVED THROUGH DESPOTISM. 265 another mould, they might have been swept from the earth by the sheer violence of strangers. But it was William the Great, and no smaller man, with whom England had to deal. He was a Conqueror, but he was no destroyer. He had no thought of sweeping away laws and rights which he knew how to turn into the truest props of his own power. And the laws and rights which he thus preserved lived on to overthrow the despotism which they once had strengthened. The fiery trial which England went through was a fire which did not destroy, but only purified. England came forth once more the Eng- land of old. She came forth with her ancient laws formed into shapes better suited to changed times, and with a new body of fellow-workers in those long- estranged kinsmen whom birth on her soil had changed into kinsmen once again. That we could do all this came mainly of our momentary overthrow, and of the greatness of him who overthrew us. If -Alfred and Cnut gave us laws of their own free will, William preserved those laws, perhaps not of his own free will, but he pre- served them none the less. Our short affliction worked for us an abiding happiness ; if we had not perished for a moment, we might for ever have been undone. § 3. The Legislation of the Norman Kings, I have had to point out many times in the course of this history that the amount of actual change made in the laws of England during the time of strictly Norman rule comes within a very small compass. Not only would it have been quite contrary to all William's policy and to all his professions to make any violent changes in the laws of his new kingdom, but legislation, as we understand it, did not, in the ideas of those times, fill any prominent place among the duties of a King or of a ruling assembly. Law in those days, like the Greek word which translates it, meant custohi. A code of laws meant the putting the existing customs into writing; a new law, as distinguished from a mere ordinance to meet a particular emergency, was a thing which men always shrank from. The popular cry was never for new laws ; it was always for the better observance of the old. The professed object of Kings and their Councils was not to enact new laws, but to find out what the old laws were, and to enforce them afresh with new authority. The notion that the Norman Conquest at once made some great change in our written law springs fi'om an utter misconception of the nature of that Conquest, combined with a misconception of the nature and authority of certain early monuments of English juris- prudence. The notion that William systematically substituted the law of Normandy for the law of England involves a further misconception, namely that there was any law of Normandy for him to substitute. 266 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST Normandy beyond doubt had its legal customs like other countries; and it is quite possible that those customs may have been put into the shape of a written code before William came into England. But there is no evidence that this was so. No Norman code earlier than William, no Norman code of the reign of Wlliam or his sons, has ever been produced. The feudal jurisprudence which men have deemed that William brought with him from Normandy into England really grew up in both countries side by side, while the two were under the same rulers. The notion that this or that feature of our law was brought over from Normandy is part of the strange belief dut nothing English, whether in law or language or anything else, can really be English, but that everything must be " derived " from some foreign source or other. The truth is that, except in some particular cases of which I have already spoken and of which I shall presently speak again, there was no real derivation of English law from Normandy. The administrative system of the two Henries grew up in both countries side by side. There was no real derivation firom one country to another; as for any particular changes in detail, it is more likely that each of them first came into use in the greater country, and was then adopted in the smaller. The way in which the law, or rather custom, of Normandy rcaDy affected the law of England was of quite another kind. Few or no new institutions were substituted for old ones, but several new institutions were brought in alongside of old ones. We have alreadj traced this out in the case of the royal power. Nothing was abolished, nothing was taken away ; but some new sources of authority, influence, and profit were set up alongside of the old ones. As it was with the royal power, so it was with many other things. I have mentioned in a former volume* that, according to a crowd of earlier precedents in the case of two nations dwelling in the same land, the Norman setders in England were for some purposes allowed to keep their own customary law. In the same way, Norman ideas, Norman prindi^es, if not actual Norman institutions, crept in alongside of earlier English ideas, sometimes modifying the English institutions, sometimes merelj changing their names. In the long struggle between the two lan- guages, sometimes the foreign, sometimes the native name, has won the day. Sometimes the French or Latin name of a custom or office is no real translation of the English, but is the name of the Norman office which was supposed most nearly to answer to the English one.* The shire becomes the county^ two names neither of which has been able wholly to displace the other. Its Sheriff is in Latin vicecames ; but in this case the foreign name has taken no root in our tongue.' * See vol. iv. p. 423. " This is illustrated by the fact that ' Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 443. Viseou/U came to bear quite another PRESERVATION OF ENGLISH LAW. 267 hir institutions, in short, are in no sense of Norman origin, but they ear about them the trace of deep and abiding Norman influences. 'he laws of England were never abolished to make room for any laws f Normandy ; but the laws of England were largely modified, both in >nn and spirit, by their administration at the hands of men all whose leas were naturally Norman. The change was silent and gradual. l8 a rule, it was change of a kind which was not likely to be set down \ written ordinances. Of the three reigns with which we have hiefly to deal, the reign which was most fertile in real change \ the one of which we have no written ordinances at all We have ^ legislation of the Conqueror, and we have real legislation of Henry le First. But no one ever saw a law of William Rufus. Yet we ave seen that the reign of William Rufus was the time when the lost important novelties were introduced into the tenure of land. tut the evil customs devised by Randolf Flambard were not likely to e set down in the form of a code. What the law of Rufus was, 'e know only negatively, through the law of Henry which professed ) sweep it away. The theory which attributes to William a settled purpose to uproot le old law of England is the mere invention of a much later age ; it \ of a piece with the notion that he tried to root out the English inguage. Even the legendary account of William's legislation gives o countenance to this notion. It represents William, not as an movator, but as the codifier of the laws of Eadward. The utmost ut the story attributes to him is an unfulfilled purpose to enforce the IW8 of one part of England over the whole kingdom.^ Till the nanimous voice of the nation taught him to do otherwise, he was linded to decree that the law of the Denalagu, the law of the Danish insfolk of the Normans, should become the law of the Saxon and inglian shires also. This, we cannot doubt, is a pure fancy; all emembrance of any specially Scandinavian law had as utterly died way from the minds of the Normans of William's day as the smembrance of their old Scandinavian tongue. But, if we cast away lis embellishment, and accept the more possible part of the story, V'illiam stands out most distinctly, not as one who brings in new Lws, but as one who enacts the old ones afresh. He summons men •om every shire to say what the laws of Eadward were. In the enuine pieces of William's legislation, in those amendments to the iws of Eadward which are spoken of in the charter of Henry,* he owhere abolishes the old law ; he at most sets up something new by le side of it. In one point only does he venture to speak a word leaniog as a degree of peerage. Per- offidal Vicecomes, apt the old-fashioned phrase of *'Lord ' See Appendix KK. iscount*' was meant to distinguish ' See above, p. ill, and vol. iv. pp. le Vicecomn of the peerage from the a 1 6, 423. 268 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMANT CONQUEST. against a law which he found in force. This is in the ordinance for removing ecclesiastical causes from the ordinary courts, and cstabfidh ing separate ecclesiastical courts alongside of them. Here, under the influence of the new ecclesiastical ideas, which were famUiar on the continent, but which had as yet made but little way in England, he distinctly ventures to say that the ancient laws were bad.' But evw here, though he removes a certain class of causes from the jurisdictioB of the old courts, he no way innovates on those courts themsehcs. The new institution is simply set up alongside of the old one. Of his other ordinances, some are mere confirmations of the existing hv, possibly T^ith small variations in detail. Such is the ordinance agunsr the slave-trade, where he merely re-enacts what other ELings had enacted before him.' Some of the ordinances are in then* own nannt temporary. They refer to the immediate state of things in his own day, when the status of the native inhabitants of England, of the fore^ settlers in Eadward's day, and of his own followers, warlike and peace- ful, needed to be fixed.' But here again, all that is done is to set op the new by the side of the old. The Frenchman is allowed to keep his own law, whilst the Englishman keeps his. Yet, oddly enoagfa, out of this temporar}* enactment came a change in our judicial pro- ceedings, the traces of which lingered on within living memory. The custom of deciding causes by wager of battle came in as part of the personal law of the Frenchman, to which no Englishman could be constrained against his will.* The Englishman had hrs choice between the ancient ordeal and the newly introduced wager of battle. Bm it is plain that the wager of battle becanoe the more popular form of trial of the two. It had in some points a more taking character, and its adoption put the conquered on a level with his conqueror. The English ordeal, condemned by the Church, went out of use, whik the wager of battle lived on, suniving in the Statute-book long after it had been forgotten in practice, till it was formally abolished in oar own centuf}'. Among the genuine ordinances of William, the only one in wh'ch we can see any distinct innovation springing from William's own personal Ti-ill is that which altogether forbids the punishment of death.' This was a distinct innovation on the law of Cnut, which makes death the punishment both of high and of petty treason, and e\'cn of certain breaches of the King's peace.* Here again there is in strictness no abolition of ancient law ; mutilation was, in the ideas of those da}'S. a merciful substitute for death. And this iimovation at least did not • Sec vol. \y. p. 263. * See vol. ir. p. 424. • See Tol. iv. p. 424. • See his Laws, 57, 59, 77 ; Sdunic!. > See vol. iv. pp. 117, 423. pp. 303, 314. • See vol. iv. p. 423, and Appendix LL. LEGISLATION OF WILLIAM. 269 last beyond William's own lifetime ; men, French and English, were freely hanged in the reigns of both his sons.* The great ordinance which made all the under-tenants become the men of the King, if new in form, was nothing new in substance. Its object was simply to counteract the tendency of the new state of things, and to keep the King and his people in their ancient relations to one another.' The forest-laws of William are not to be foimd in the shape of any genuine ordinance; their nature has to be made out from later notices and from the rhetorical complaint of the national Chronicler. Here again there must have been distinct innovation ; but here too the innovation took the form of bringing in something new by the side of the old. The general laws of the realm were not interfered with ; but a special and harsher legislation was set up in certain special districts. Even in this, the worst of all the changes directly wrought at this time, the same general principle may be traced. Something new is brought in, Imt nothing old is taken away. The genuine legislation of these times is confined to the ordinances of William of which we have already spoken, to the general charter of Henry, and to his special charters on particular subjects or to |>articular places. The collections of laws which bear the names of lA^lliam and Henry must not be mistaken for codes really issued by the authority of those Kings.' It does not therefore follow that they are forgeries in the modem sense. When we remember the true meaning of such phrases as the Law of Eadward or of any other King, that those words did not mean a code of laws enacted by him, but the system of law which had been followed in his time, there was no cKshonesty if any man versed in the law chose to put such a system into a tabular form and put the name of the King at the head of it He might do so, either as a help to the administration of the law as it stood when he wrote, or as a record of the law as it stood at a past time within his memory. Such a collection then, if made during or soon after the time of the King whose name it bears, though it has no kind of legal authority, may be of the highest value as a witness to the state of the law at a given time. It has in truth the same kind of value as any contemporary law-book of any age. When its compiler threw his collecdon into the shape of formal enactments, he most likely had no notion of deception. He was like a classical or mediaeval historian who put into the mouth of any of his actors a speech the matter of which fairly represented what the speaker was likely to say, but the actual wording of which was the historian's own. The codes which bear the names of Eadward, of William, of Henry the First, have been examined by the highest powers of ' See aboTc, pp. 84, 106. * See vol. iv. p. 472. » See Appendix KK. 270 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. modem scholarship, and a summary of the results of that ezamiiuukm I shall give elsewhere.' It is enough to say here that they supply the most speaking witness to the way in which the Old-English law wu kept in force under both William and Henry. Doubtless they give only one side of the actual state of things, and that the most fiaivoar- able side. They show us the theory of the Old-English law which was still legally in force. They do not tell us much of the Noraiaii customs which were growing up by their side ; still less do they teD ns how the Old-English laws must have changed their spirit in the hands of Norman judges and administrators. Every collection of the kind was doubtless meant to be a witness to the old law of the land, and, as such, a protest against foreign innovation. We must there- fore allow for a certain degree of colouring. Our witness has an object He puts his facts in a certain shape ; while Domesday gives us a photograph, the compilers of codes give us an artistic picture. But both Domesday and the codes witness to the same truth, that no general abolition of English law followed as an immediate result of the Conquest. Some tendencies which were already at work in a particular direction were strengthened; some other tendencies in another direction were set at work. A few special ordinances called for by the circumstances of the time were put forth, some of them of a temporary, some of a lasting nature. In all these ways the law itself was a good deal modified, and the spirit of its administration was largely changed. But there was no sweeping away of one system to make room for another. During the reigns of the two Williams and of Henry the First the old laws went on, whatever might grow up by the side of them. The law was still the law of King Eadward, wiA the amendments of King William. Then came the time of anarchy, in which the law of Eadward, the amendments of William, and every- thing else which bore the shape of law or right, all went to the ground Room was thus made for the appearance of a real lawgiver, a lawgiver who was no more bent than his predecessors on reckless or systematic abolition, but whose hands were not tied as theirs had been by the unbroken traditions of a past time. By that time too there was no need, as there had been in the first days of the Conquest, to frame separate ordinances for men differing in blood and speech. Henry of Anjou was called to the rule of a land from which the distinction of Norman and Englishman had practically passed away. He could legislate for his whole kingdom in a way in which hardly any King could legislate since the days of ^thelwulf. Under" the Angevin dynasty the modem law of England began, a law in which the ancient institutions of the land have sometimes been really set aside for foreign novelties, but in which they have more often been simply veiled under 1 See Appendix KK. LEGISLATION OF THE HENRIES. 271 new forms and new names. With Henry the Second begins the legislation which has gone on to our own time. That legislation has always been wisest and noblest when it has taken the form of sweeping away foreign novelties and bringing back the old principles of our ancient law. Its greatest triumphs have ever been to cast away the usurpations of foreign Kings and the subtleties of foreign lawyers, and substantially to give us back the old freedom of England, the Laws of Eadward, the Laws of uEIfred, changed in form, but in truth unchanged in substance.^ § 4. Admimsiraiton under the Norman Kings, The changes which were made under the Norman Kings in the way of direct legislation, the changes which could be announced by proclamations or set down in the form of written statutes, we have thus seen to be few indeed. But the changes of another kind, the gradual but inevitable changes in the working of the system of government, were of the greatest moment, and they affected every detail of ad- ministration, from the highest to the lowest. And they no less affected the whole fabric of society and the relations of class to class, from the highest to the lowest. This was the way in which a conquest like William's, a foreign conquest cloked under the forms of native law, was sure to work most thoroughly. And, when both the spirit and the forms of the administration had been thus thoroughly, though silently, changed, the change reacted on formal legislation. We see the legislative results of the Conquest far less in the few ordinances of the Conqueror himself than in the statutes of his remote descendants. No ordinance can be shown by which military tenures were formally established; but every act which regulates them or takes them for granted, down to the great act which swept them away, is a legislative result of the coming of William. And so with all the other practical changes which the Conquest brought with it ; they were established in practice before they showed themselves in the written law. Every detail of administration, central and local, was changed, if not in its form, at least in its spirit. Sometimes a new institution, a new office, grew up by the side of the old one ; in any case, the old institution, the old office, was clothed with a charaoter wholly new. In this way our administrative system gradually changed into a mixed system, in which sometimes the old and sometimes the new element got the upper hand. And in this way we may explain a seeming anomaly. We can understand why the forms and titles and phrases of the days when the distinction between Englishman and Norman was forgotten, * See Growth of the English Constitution, p. 1 26 et seqq. 272 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST, have so much more Norman a look than the forms and titles and phrases of the days when that distinction was still in full force. The Chroniclers, as long as they go on, still speak the language of earlier times. The King still summons his Witan to a GemSL V^/Tienwe again, in the days of Edward the First, get English chronicles in another shape, we hear no more of the Witan and their GemSts ; we find our- selves in an age of Councils and Parliaments, This does not show that the age of Edward the First was less English than the age of the Conqueror and Henry the First ; it proves in truth the opposite. As long as the two races were divided, so long did two systems of law and administration, each with its own vocabulary, go on side, by side: When they were fused into one, sometimes the native and sometimes the foreign nomenclature prevailed. To take the highest case of all the King no longer held a Witenagem6t but a Parliament; but he himself still remained a King; he had not been changed into a Roy} I have already asserted, or rather taken for granted, that, under whatever change of name, under whatever change of form, the con- tinuity of the Old-English national Assemblies went on unbroken through all the changes wrought by the Conquest. A Great Council of Henry the Second undoubtedly differed widely from a Witenagem6t of the Confessor, and a Parliament of Edward the First differed jet more widely from a Great Council of Henry the Second. But there is no break between any of the three. The constitution of the Assembly is changed, first in practice, then by direct ordinance ; but the Assembly itself is the same. At no time was one kind of assembly formally abolished and another kind of assembly formally put in its stead. Reform bills we have seen without number; a constituent assembly we have never seen. In the first volume of this History I maintained the view that the WitenagemStf and the Mycel Gemot, the ancient national Assembly of England, was in theory an assembly in which every freeman of the realm had a right to attend. That view I have seen no reason to change ; and the seeming difference on this head between my views and the views of the scholar to whom on these points I am always willing to bow," is, I think, more seeming than real. It must be remembered that we have here to deal with an assembly of whose constitution we have no direct or formal account ; we have to put together our notions of it from a great number of scattered and seem- * This is true of Southern English, the imitation of French than through anj Engh'sh of the kingdom of England. In Norman tradition. the English of Scotland, the King is by * See Stubbs, Constitutiooal History, i. sixteenth-century writers often called Roy; lai, and Appendix MM, but this was more hkely through later CONSTITUTION OF THE ANCIENT ASSEMBLY, 273 ingly contradictory notices. According to one view, the Assembly was in theory open to every freeman, but in practice only a small class habitually attended. According to the other view, it was in theory confined to a small class, but in practice it was ever and anon thrown open to large classes of men besides its usual members. I still hold that the former view is the more consistent with the general history of political assemblies throughout the world ;^ but the practical aspect of the two doctrines is the same. It is not denied on either showing that the Assembly was commonly a comparatively small gathering of the great men of the realm. It is not denied on either showing that the great men of the realm were ever and anon rein- forced by the presence of large popular bodies, by whole armies or by the mass of the citizens of great cities.* Such a body I conceive the Witenagem6t of Eadward to have been. Under ordinary circum- stances it would consist of the Bishops, the Abbots, the Earls, the officers of the King's household, of a large number of King's Thegns from the neighbourhood of the place where the Assembly was held, of a smaller number from more distant districts. In or- dinary times the nation was willing to let these its natural chiefs act as its representatives. In times of great national excitement, when Eadward was to be chosen, when Godwine was to be inlawed, the nation asserted its dormant right. At such moments, the citizens of London or Winchester, the armies which had refused to draw the sword against each other,' if they did not join in the deliberations of Earls and Bishops, at least raised their voices along with theirs. Such was the Assembly in the days of King Eadward ; such I believe it to have remained in legal theory in the days of King William. The notices which we have of the constitution of the Assembly during the Norman reigns are as scattered and as vague as the notices which we have of its constitution in earlier times. But it is plain that the great gatherings which were held three times in the year, when the King had with him ** all the rich men over all England, Archbishops and suffragan Bishops, and Abbots and Earls and Thegns and Knights,*' * must have been meetings that were pretty largely attended. In the great Gemdt at Salisbury the gathering of the land-owners who came to become the King's men, whether their number reached sixty thousand or not,* must have formed a body rivalling the greatest Assemblies of earlier times. But in the description of this last Assembly we clearly see the beginning of the distinction which was the source of our whole later parliamentary constitution. The Witan and the great body of the assembled land-owners are now distinguished • Sec Comparative Politics, pp. 216- * Sec vol. ii. p. a 16. 222. * See vol. iv. p. 42 j. ^ Sec vol. i. pp. 256. 354; il pp. 67, • lb. p. 471. 220. VOL. V. T 274 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. from each other. It is hardly going too far to see in this expresson the mark of a great practical change. When, in any body, great or small, a custom of summoning particular members is once estabtisbed, a great step has been taken towards the disfranchisement of those members who are not summoned. Something of this kind has happened in the history both of the modem Privy Council and of the chapters of cathedral churches.^ The distinction between the \^itan and the other land-owners may very well point to a distinction between two classes. A line seems to be drawn between those greai personages who were personally summoned as a matter of ordmaij course, and the lesser men who were summoned only in a body, and who most likely were not summoned at all, unless, as in the Satisbuiy Gem6t, there was some special reason for their attendance. The two classes whom the Chronicler distinguishes in this entry seem to answer to the two classes who are distinguished in the fourteenth section of the Great Charter. The Prelates, Earls, and greater Barons are each to be summoned personally ; the great mass of the King's tenants-iii- chief are to be summoned in a body by the several Sheriflfs.* William doubtless summoned whom he would, and in the Salisbury Gem6t he summoned a larger body than the tenants-in-chief, namely the tenants- in-chief and all those under-tenants who were thought worth sum- moning. By the time of John the vague practice of earlier times had stiffened into a definite custom. The clause of the Great Charter supposes a state of things in which no man will come unless he is summoned, but in which large classes have a right to be summoned A qualification for membership of the Assembly has practically been established. As was natural at this time, when feudal notions were creeping in, the qualification took a feudal shape. The right to be summoned was established in the case of the King's tenants-in-chief, but it did not go further. This amounted to a practical disfranchise- ment of all except the King's tenants-in-chief. There was no need to take away their right by any formal enactment. As soon as the doctrine of the summons w^as fully established, it would die out of itself. It would doubtless have done so in any case. It would do so all the more surely and all the more speedily, under the cir- cumstances of England in those times. There was nothing to make an attendance in the Assembly attractive to any class of native Englishmen, except the few who contrived to keep great estates or high offices. The crowd which had pressed joyfully to vote for the driving out of the Norman Archbishop Robert would not press ' See History of Federal Government, barones, sigillatim per literas nostras; et i. 308. praeterea faciemiu sumrooneri m generafi^ " Cap. 14 (Stubbs, Select Charters, 290). per vicecomites et baliivos nostros^ omucs '*Sumnioneri facienius archiepiscopos. ept- iUos qui de nobis tenent in capite.** icopos, abbatcs, comites, et majores PRACTICE OF SUMMONS, 275 "With the same zeal when all that was to be done was to become the men of the Norman King. The summons would be needful whenever any special reason made their presence needful. In this -way, as it seems to me, the old national Assembly changed into a body consisting of two definite classes of men. One class consisted of those whose rank or office entitled them to a personal summons ; the other was the whole body of tenants-in-chief who, when sum- moned, were summoned generally in their several shires. As I have before remarked, we may in this distinction see the germ of Lords and Commons. The Lords are the pregadi, the counsellors who are specially summoned. The origin of their order is exactly analogous to that of the senators so called in the Venetian com- monwealth.* The Witan ' of the Salisbury Gem6t, the great men who had the right of personal summons, became the Peers. Of the peerage the summons is the very essence. It was reserved for a modem House of Lords to trample law and history under foot, by refusing admission to their body to one of the Witan, lawfully sum- moned by his sovereign, because of the trumpery quibble that his sovereign had not pledged herself to summon his descendants also.' The members of the House of Lords are simply those among Eng- lishmen, Earls, Bishops, and some other more modern classes, who have never lost the right of personal attendance, because they have never lost the right to a personal summons. They represent by unbroken succession the Witan of the Gem6t of Salisbury and of all the Gem6ts before that. The " landsitting men " of Salisbury easily stiffened into the tenants -in-chief of the Great Charter. Their per- sonal attendance was presently exchanged for an attendance through representatives, and we thus come to knights of the shire. But, beisides the " landsitting men," there was another element. We have seen in the days of Stephen the citizens of London and Winchester make good their ancient right to a voice in the choosing and de- posing of Kings.' Presently that right, in itself somewhat vague and precarious, was merged by the act of the great Simon in the general right of the citizens and burgesses of England to appear by their representatives alongside of the Witan and the landsitting men. Yet that right did not wholly die out ; the tradition of it lived on to appear in after times, twice in a tumultuous, once in a more regular form. Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third were called to the Crown, no less than Stephen, by the voice of the citizens of London. And in the Assembly which called on William of Orange to take on himself the provisional government of the * See Daruy Histotre de Venise, Ub. ii. May's Coostitiitional History of Englandi c. 47. i. 290, 298. • 1 refer to the case of Lord Wensley- * See above, pp. 1 63, 204. dale's peerage in 1 856. See Sir Ertkinc T 3 276 POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. kingdom, along with the Lords and the members of the fonner /arliaments, the citizens of London had their place as of old.^ It was then without any sudden break, without any formal act of enfranchisement or of disfranchisement, that the old national Assem- blies of England, the common heritage of the whole Teutonic race and even of the whole Aryan family, the counterpart of the Achaian agori and of the Roman comUia, changed, in the course of a few generations, into the form of a modem Parliament. ^The change was the natural result of the circumstances of the Norman period and of the influences which were at work during that period. The chai^ seems to be greater than it was, because of the changes in the names both of the Assembly itself and of the members who composed it It is not to be denied that the changes of name, from the Witena^emot to the Great Council, from the Great Council to the Parliament, really point to practical changes in the constitution of the Assembly. Bm if changes of language had not brought with them changes of name, we should perhaps be less inclined than we now are to dwell on the changes which the names certainly express. The change from an English to a Latin, from a Latin to a French name, makes us fancy that there was more of formal change than there really was. It sug- gests the notion of breaches of continuity which never happened And, after all, even the change of name is in many cases more ap- parent than real. The new names are often mere translations of the old ones. And this is specially to be seen in the names given to the Assembly itself. The name of Witan indeed dies out; the formal style of the wise men is lost in such vague descriptions as procerti and magnates. But the ancient title dies out very gradually. It long survives the Conquest, both in its English and its Latin form.* The names of the Assembly itself are palpable translations of earlier phrases. The Magnum Concilium is simply a translation of the alternative name of the Mycel Gem6t, The Parliament^ the colloquium of our continental kinsfolk, is simply a translation of the deep speech which King William had with his Witan. The jnajores natu by whom Stephen was raised to the Crown simply translate the Ealdormen and Yldestan of earlier times. The T/iegns and Knights who came together when William wore his crown are simply translated into the Barons and Chevaliers of the foreign tongue, and in the Barons at least we may see an old ^ See Growth of the English Contti- Again, in t. 169, be appoints a court tution, pp. 102, 201. officer; **Consilio cpiscoponim soonim et ' That the name Witan goes on in alionim quorundam sapientvm wronm English, as long as we have any records in regni fui.** Lastly, in i. 207, he settles English, no reader of the Chronicle needs the number of the judges •* per consilium to be told ; but the name also goes on in sapientivm regni sui.** Here is the tctj Latin. In Benedict, i. 116, Henry the phrase of Alfred, "mid minra witeoi Second consults " archiprspsulcs et episcopos ge))eahte." We lose ranch by having no et comites et sapientiores regni sui.'* English Chronicler of this time. CHANGE IN NOMENCLATURE. 277 Teutonic name under a foreign guise. The Barons of England, a name made dear to us by the great struggle of the thirteenth century, are but in truth those Beornas to whom -